


Preliator

by Velvedere



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A lot - Freeform, Bottom Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy - Freeform, Infinity Gems, Loki Gets Beat Up, Loki's Kingship, Loki's Plans Go Wrong, M/M, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Smut, Star Wars References, my continuing obsession with Loki talking to himself, oh god the melodrama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:19:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4007365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki's guise as Odin allows him free rein to rule Asgard. He has a plan for the Infinity Gems, and what to do with them. But Thanos' forces are closing in, and Thor is growing suspicious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dream Within Dream We Travel

**Author's Note:**

> a continuation of my other fic "What Loki Was Doing Around 'Age of Ultron'"

Loki under Odin’s guise spent a good deal of time in the library. He devoted hours to pouring over ancient tomes – a habit he’d always had as himself, really – and combed through entire collections of Asgard’s history, their pages painted and framed in bright, shifting illustrations, or else carved into stones lined with faintly glowing runes. His hands touched and turned the parchment with careful reverence, smiling, a spark of gold reflected in his eyes as he came across secrets previously unknown. Reading more of the events of the universe’s creation (couched in metaphor and symbolism as it was), of ancient tales involving stones and runes, of Ymir’s and Yggdrasil. Seeking always more.

He was making progress. Slowly but steadily drawing closer to what he doggedly sought.

His recent kingship afforded Loki the privilege of having the whole of the archives at his disposal.

Now if he could only find the time to peruse them without being bothered by every little matter that needed seeing to in all of Asgard.

“What is this?” Loki-Odin’s eyebrow raised as he glanced to the cup of wine just then being poured by a servant at the table where he sat.

Servants and palace guards alike had learned not to disturb their king during his time in the library, save for a matter of utmost importance. Or to bring him the odd refreshment.

Even that carried its risks.

The servant paused, hesitating.

“Our freshest wine, my king,” they answered, nervously. “As you requested.”

Loki-Odin huffed.

“I did no such thing.”

The servant faltered, holding the wine pitcher tilted over a half-filled cup. Odin had requested it. The servant remembered quite clearly. But rumors also abounded of the old king growing more and more senile by the day – just as his temper grew greater and greater in proportion – and no citizen of Asgard desired to be the target of his wrath.

“I am sorry, sire.” The servant bowed and picked up the cup. “I’ll take it away immediately.”

“See that you do.” Odin did not look up from the volume he held in his hands.

“Is there...anything you would rather, my king?”

Odin hummed. He turned a page.

“Mead, I think. Yes. That would do nicely.”

“Yes, sire.”

“And have all the tapestries in the citadel cleaned, and the floors polished.”

The servant blinked. Hesitated again.

“But...sire...we’ve only just finished both those tasks. You instructed they be done last—”

One eye flashed over the top of the book.

“We’ll do it again,” the servant said quickly, bowing as they hurried backwards out of the chamber. “And again. As many times as you command it, sire.”

They left.

Loki smiled to himself as he settled back into his seat, turning another page in the hefty tome.

Thor came in shortly after.

He lingered near the doorway, as hesitant as a nervous page.

“Father?” His voice rumbled in the quiet.

Odin did not look up.

He turned another page.

“Thor,” he said.

Thor stepped in, stooping under the arch of the stone entryway.

“Are you...terribly occupied?”

Loki smiled easily through Odin’s gaze.

“Never too much to speak to my favorite son,” he said, glancing up on the last word.

Thor’s flinch was wonderful, but he made no comment. Loki set his book down and gestured him to an empty chair across the table.

Thor sat, though he sat uncomfortably, casting his gaze about the interior of the library. Overly aware of its quiet and emptiness.

As if it was missing something.

“Tell me what is on your mind,” Loki prompted.

Thor took a breath, folding his hands together over the top of the table.

“Father,” he said slowly. “I know you are well versed in matters of magic and prophecy...”

“Buttering me over again?” Odin’s mouth turned up at the corner.

Thor smiled back, his shoulders relaxing the slightest degree.

“When I told you of the vision I had before, I must confess I didn’t tell you...entirely...everything.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. He leaned back, settling in his chair. Tapped his fingers lightly on the arm.

“Is that so,” he said flatly, only a hint of surprise.

Thor leaned forward, rising enough to peer over the book open before him.

“What is this?”

Loki slammed it shut.

“Never mind. Tell me what ails you.”

Thor hesitated only a moment longer, eying who he presumed to be his father across the table.

“I have...told you of what I saw, in the Well of Sight,” he said quietly, suppressing the urge to shudder at the memory by rubbing his hands together in front of him. “Asgard burning, and Hel.”

“Yes,” said Loki.

“There was more. I saw...” Thor ducked his head. He looked down at his clasped hands.

Loki finished his thoughts for him.

“It was Loki?”

Thor looked up, open shock slackening his features. Loki smirked.

“Your unfortunate brother has ever been your weak point, my son.” He gestured. Inviting. “Tell me. What did that loathesome shade have to say?”

“You should not speak of him in such a way,” Thor mumbled.

Loki did not answer. It had been this way between them since that fateful journey to Svartalfheim. Loki did so enjoy speaking ill of himself in Odin’s voice. It seemed to take little for Thor to believe it was something the true Odin would say. What Loki loved even more was how quickly Thor came to his defense.

“I saw Loki,” Thor continued after a moment’s meaningful gaze. “He walked among the ruins as if he was apart from them. The fires did not touch him. He wore a cloak and a mask.”

“In Hel,” Loki murmured. “But not in Hel. How did you know it was he?”

Thor’s jaw tightened.

“I know.”

“Did he speak?”

Thor’s gaze flickered briefly to one side. Loki knew his next words would be a lie.

“No. He only moved ahead of me through a crowd. I followed him.”

“Where did he lead?”

“To a chamber. Immense and dark. It was made of stone, and pale roots covered the ceiling. There was a pool of dark water at its center, and three figures seated upon thrones in recessed alcoves.” Thor paused to take a breath. “They wore masks as well. A goat. A raven. A wolf.”

Loki rubbed a hand over his lips, slowly thoughtful, as Odin would have done.

“And what transpired between them?”

“I...do not know.” Thor shook his head, wretchedly. “I could not hear.”

“So Loki in Hel, along with all of Asgard’s denizens. But somehow not affected by it. The Norns, perhaps? At the Well of Urd.”

“What would Loki be doing there?”

“Some form of treachery, no doubt.” Odin shrugged easily, gesturing aside with one hand. “But he is dead. We have little to fear from him now.”

Thor’s jaw tightened again. Loki watched the bob in his throat as he swallowed, the glint in his eyes that spoke of barely restrained reply.

Loki itched to know what he would say.

“I think there is more here we do not know,” Thor said quietly.

“As much can be said for every being in existence,” said Loki. “Your thoughts dwell overly much on that wretch.”

“Loki was not—”

“If you wish to investigate this matter, you may.” Odin nodded and waved his hand dismissively. “I will seek out answers as well.”

“Is that why you spend so many hours here?” Thor glanced up to the library walls around them. “The servants are worried, father. Your subjects have gone a long while without seeing their king.”

“The emergence of the infinity stones is of higher priority than making speeches.” Loki shook his head. “If the servants are worried, then put them to work. It will take their minds away from matters they cannot comprehend.”

Thor watched him a moment in quiet, saying nothing. Loki turned his gaze down as if to return to his book as he opened it and settled the massive tome again in his lap.

When several heartbeats passed, he looked up again.

Thor’s eyes were there to meet him.

“Is there something else?” he prompted.

Thor opened his mouth, then closed it. That flicker of restraint shone in his eyes.

“No, father.”

“Then if that is all.” Odin waved him away. “Perhaps you should pay your companions on Midgard a visit. They seem to cheer you. They may have some insight into these matters. Especially your Vision friend.”

“Yes,” said Thor. “I believe he will.”

He rose from his seat and left, turning aside through the entryway to allow a servant passage as they returned with Odin’s mead.

Loki scowled after his back until Thor was gone.

“What is this?” he snapped at the servant.

The servant froze before pouring, twice as nervous as before.

“Y-Your mead, sire. As you requested...?”

“I did no such thing.”

The servant turned several shades more pale.

Loki waved his hand.

“Take it away! I have no desire for such swill. I’m parched from this place. Bring me cold water instead.”

The servant sagged, and went, hanging their head.

That made Loki feel a little better.

*****

That night, he went to Thor again.

As himself, slender and healthy.

He whispered vile things against Thor’s neck as he coaxed him onto his back and his legs apart, working his fingers in and out of Thor’s graciously accepting rear.

Loki’s teeth touched his collarbone, listening to Thor’s delicious gasp.

“What words did I speak to you in your vision?” he whispered.

“What?” Thor frowned, straining to think. To focus through a lust-ridden haze.

Loki curled his hand around Thor’s cock, stroking long, gentle caresses.

“The words I said,” He licked up a line of sweat where it pooled on Thor’s chest. “Say them to me.”

Thor groaned and arched, caught and held in thrall under Loki’s touch.

He couldn’t summon thought enough to resist.

“It was...you spoke of the infinity stones,” he grunted, managing only with great strain. Loki stroked and flitted his tongue over the head of his prick, bracing the length of him against one hand. Making Thor groan and rock his hips up as he sought greater contact. “You said...”

“Yes?” Loki breathed, kissing him.

“You said...you knew what to do with them...that you had a plan...” Thor closed his eyes. Tipped his head back. Words came punctuated by half-choked moans. “You knew how to stop...what was...what was...”

“What was?” Loki purred and nuzzled the inside of his thigh. He gave Thor’s length an encouraging pump.

Thor arched into the bed.

“...what was coming...” he whimpered.

Loki rose over him, braced on hands and knees about his waist and shoulders. He bent his head to kiss Thor’s lips. They parted for him easily, a moan deep and reverberant through Thor’s chest as he tasted him deeper. Greedy. Hungered. Loki traced his mouth with his tongue and lingered near, their breath mingling in hot puffs on their skin.

“And what is coming?” he whispered.

For a moment, Thor opened his eyes. He looked up to him, hair a tangled mess on his pillow, loose strands of it clinging to his brow where it was damp with sweat. His eyes were dark and mouth lightly parted as he panted for breath, skin flushed with desire’s rosy stain.

He met Loki’s eyes, and held them.

“You said,” he murmured, as if not entirely aware, “...death.”

Loki’s brow lightly furrowed. He ground his hips down once against Thor’s in encouragement. And to hear him moan.

“Death?”

“Loki,” Thor whined, reaching for him.

Loki caught his hand and linked their fingers, kissing the back of Thor’s palm and tonguing between his fingers before he pinned him down over Thor’s head. Drawing him taut. Trapping him.

“Why not tell Odin?” he rasped, rocking slowly against him in taunting, leisurely thrusts. Loki had become rather artful in these sorts of interrogations. “Why confess to him, then not tell him everything?”

“Because...because...” Thor closed his eyes and tipped back his head, bearing neck and throat wide to Loki’s teeth.

He was having trouble thinking.

“Father doesn’t...know...he doesn’t think of Loki as anything...except...”

“What?” Loki licked along his jawline. Kissed his chest. Drew his tongue and fingertips across the peak of one dark nipple.

Thor shuddered.

“Nhh, _Loki_...”

Thor’s free hand came up suddenly, catching the back of Loki’s head. His fingers curled at the nape of his neck, just where his hair fell across naked skin. Thor pulled him down the same moment he arched himself up, catching Loki in a sudden, unexpectedly tender kiss.

Loki stilled, weight pulling heavy and cold in his gut.

“Loki,” Thor murmured, cupping his cheek. Whispering nothings between deep kisses and warm drags of his lips. “Oh, Loki...” The rough pad of his thumb traced across the sharp lines of him. He touched their brows together. “I miss her, too.”

Loki’s eyes grew wide as his heart leaped into his throat.

He panicked.

He grabbed Thor’s cock and shoved himself inside him as he stroked, quick and hard, to bring him to an end. Thor’s body writhed beneath him and arched and shuddered in the most beautiful way as he found release, keening a sound of Loki’s name, the combination of which allowed Loki to spend himself deep inside him as well.

In the lethargy that followed, it was easy to weave a quick spell over Thor’s senses, coaxing him back to immediate sleep.

Loki slipped away and into his cloak, drawing the hood of it high over his head as he scowled at Thor beneath the dark lining.

“You can never lie back and simply do as you’re told,” he murmured, stealing away into a shadow. Leaving Thor to sleep.

Though, Loki supposed, his brother would be terribly dull if he did.

*****

The first attack came a few nights later, without hint or warning.

Stars and nebulae sparkled on a clear night over the realm, casting the citadel in a particularly beautiful red-gold light.

Heimdall alerted Loki while in the throne room that an army appeared suddenly among the stars, just along the edge of Asgard’s borders.

Thus far they hadn’t penetrated the outer shielding – Loki had not let Malekith’s attack go unremembered...he had made a some improvements to the realm’s defenses – but with enough steady bombardment, they would break through by dawn.

Loki donned Odin’s war armor and rode out at the head of his army, Thor to one side of him and Sif on the other. Heimdall remained at the citadel to act as a last line of defense, should the enemy reach that far.

Though Loki was not overly worried.

“They are here for the weapons’ vault, and what lies therein,” Thor said as their horses’ hooves thundered across the Bifrost, casting showers of sparks in their wake.

“Yes,” Loki hummed, grinning a hint of maliciousness. “Aren’t they.”

He said nothing else until they slowed at the Bifrost’s edge, long repaired from when he and Thor in their fight had managed to destroy it.

Loki held Gungnir out to one side, sitting tall on Sleipnir’s saddle as he lifted his eyes towards the sky. The number of ships blotted out a good deal of the stars overhead. Others skulked as dark silhouettes among the nebulae.

They watched as an alien army coiled and writhed among the ships. Like parasites waiting to descend upon their next meal.

“King Odin,” boomed a voice, and a projection appeared. It was not Thanos, but some other alien creature, speaking in his place. Again.

Loki’s shoulders relaxed a miniscule amount.

“You do us great honor! Come to greet us yourself.”

“I do not lead my army from behind,” Loki spoke to the voice, doubtless he was heard. “Now what it is you want?”

“Only what is rightfully my master’s. Hand over what gems you possess, and you may yet be spared.”

“I do not bargain with illusions!” Loki barked. “Speak to me directly, and we may reach an accord.”

Sif cast a glance behind Loki’s back towards Thor.

He nodded to her, quietly reassuring.

The projection flickered and went out. There hung a moment’s quiet, then a portion of one of the enemy ships slid open. A number of small fliers appeared.

They drifted down – slowly, gracefully – towards the Bifrost’s edge. Loki gave the word to lower the shields only the barest amount to let them through, until they stood on even ground.

Relatively.

The aliens still hovered above them.

“And what agreement is there to be reached, King Odin?” said the same speaker, much smaller in person than the projection had made him appear to be. “Our numbers surpass your own. You have an entire realm to defend.”

“Which we are prepared to do so,” said Loki in Odin’s blunt delivery. “Go back and tell your master neither he nor his lowest minions will set foot here. The gems are beyond his grasp.”

“Is that so?” The alien sneered, drifting a little closer on its flier. It looked down over Loki in his guise as if eying a small insect. “Believe me when I say this, little king: you would much rather deal with me now. My master is not a kind or hesitant one.”

“Where is your master?” Loki glanced across the spread of ships. “Still hiding away somewhere? Letting others do his work for him?”

“My master is the great tyrant of the galaxy!” The alien swooped in closer, hissing vehemence so close Loki could feel the blast of the fliers’ engines against his skin.

Sleipnir snorted and pawed the ground in displeasure.

“The Mad Titan! The Avatar of Death!” the alien ranted. “He is above dealing with the likes of lowly Asgardians!”

“We do not deal with cowards afraid to fight their own battles,” growled Thor.

Loki hushed him with a look.

The alien leader chuckled.

“Oh, he is not afraid. Merely omnipotent. You all have been pawns in his scheme all along, and you did not know it. Even now you do his work for him. Even in your deaths, you only further my master’s goals.” The alien drifted closer, sneering into Loki’s face as their eyes met. “You are not worthy to be a stain my master must scrape from his boots.”

“Is that all?” Loki hummed, feigning boredom. “You have no better offer than threats and cryptic titles?”

“You have no room to bargain,” scowled the alien. “Surrender.”

“Oh, but I do have room.” And there, Loki smiled. “This is my bargain.”

The illusion around him dropped, revealing the Destroyer in his place. The alien who had allowed himself to drift to eye level with it scarcely had the time to open his mouth before the machine’s entire body lit up with inner flame. It spat a burst of power into the sky, vaporizing not only the alien but the whole of the entourage that had accompanied him.

The true Loki – still in Odin’s guise – pushed up his helmet from where he stood further back among the ranks, dressed as any other Asgardian soldier.

Thor frowned, looking aside to him.

“When did you retrieve the Destroyer?” he murmured. “I had thought it left abandoned on Earth.”

“You are not the only one who has been busy, dear Thor,” Loki grinned.

He lifted Gungnir, and gave only one order to his army.

“Destroy them.”

*****

The battle was swift, and hard, and not without its sacrifices.

But when the skies cleared, Asgard stood, scarcely touched, while the bodies of their enemies and the burned out husks of ships drifted lifeless in the void above.

There were celebrations afterward, of course, which continued long into the next day as music played and songs were composed on the spot to commemorate the deeds of Asgard and her warriors.

Loki bore it all as much as a victorious king would be expected to, then excused himself from the feast tables.

He stole down a side corridor to head back towards the citadel, in dark and in quiet.

“They will return.” Thor’s voice stopped him at a distance. “You know that, don’t you?”

Loki stopped, internally scowling, though as he turned he smiled upon Thor, tilting up his chin.

“Of course. That is why I must go make further preparations.” He gestured towards the glowing lights and windows of the feast hall. “Let the rest of the realm enjoy their victory. They have earned it.”

Thor stood back away from the music and firelight. He wore a dark cloak pinned with gold at the shoulder, the drape and color of which made the whole of him seem somber. More wizened. Further contrasted by the halo of gold where his hair caught the light.

Loki would pay a visit to him later, once Thor had retired to his rooms. They could both use a release from the wake of battle.

It had been good to fight alongside his brother again.

Thor looked down briefly, and stepped away from the shadows.

They were alone in the courtyard.

“Father, if I may,” Thor said quietly. “I would like to inform our allies on Earth of what has happened.”

Loki nodded, though he stared. Entertaining the wonder briefly of what it would feel like to lift his hand now to brush Thor’s cheek. Just to touch him. Could he do so while maintaining that distance of mere paternal affection?

Loki didn’t doubt he could, though the thought of restraint was maddening.

Some things of his kingship had not changed at all.

“If it pleases you,” he said.

“They will need to prepare. We may require their help when the next wave comes—”

“Absolutely not.”

Thor frowned, shutting his mouth mid-breath.

“Why?”

“We do not require outside assistance.” Loki gestured to the sky. “As you can see, we are quite capable of defending ourselves.”

“But if they come in greater numbers? Or with weapons we have no experience in fighting?”

“Then we will beat them back, just as we did before.”

“What if they come armed with the other gems?”

Loki shot him a look that would have sent any lesser being away. Thor merely stood, unflinching.

“They will not,” he said through his teeth. “The gems are scattered. Safe. There is no way our enemy will find them all.”

“How can you be certain? Even one gem is enough to level worlds.”

“Do not doubt me, Thor. I am certain. Every precaution has been taken.”

Thor’s frown deepened, darkening his expression to the color of his cloak. 

Loki saw that restraint in his eyes once more.

Was it as maddening for him?

“You doubt me?” Loki growled.

“I think there is something you are not telling me,” said Thor.

“There has always been something I’ve not told you.” Loki snorted. “Ever since you were young. That is a lesson you learn with leadership.”

Loki turned away, letting Thor’s suspicion and worry and searching gaze land unheeded on his back.

He continued on towards the citadel.

“Did the attack of the dark elves teach you nothing, father?” Thor called after him. “The Aether?”

“It taught me plenty,” Loki answered over his shoulder, and did not stop.

Thor’s voice pursued him.

“It is secrets that tear friends and family apart.”

Loki said nothing.

“Mother knew that,” Thor pressed. “And so did Loki.”

Loki coughed a laugh, and reached out a hand to steady himself against the stone wall of an entryway as he reached it. He wiped his mouth, disgusted and dismissive.

“Do not overly idolize your brother now that he is dead, Thor,” he snapped. “He is not the martyr you wish to remember.”

He ducked through the archway, and disappeared into the citadel.

*****

Paths existed through the Realms beyond that of the Bifrost, even if they were not readily visible.

Loki knew this. Many knew this. But few could see.

Even fewer could travel them.

All was connected in Yggdrasil, even if the connection was the tiniest thread of spidersilk, only visible when it drifted into the light, carried on a fateful gust of wind.

The connection could be followed, if one had the courage to tug.

After leaving Thor spent that night – three times, in fact...his brother was so _healthy_ after a battle – Loki draped himself in a dark cloak lined with feathers. He tied it about his shoulders and pulled the hood over his face, stepping out onto a balcony near the top of the citadel.

From there, he could see the whole of the spread of Asgard, from the fall of water at the Bifrost’s edge to the mountains in the distance, obscuring what little there was to be had beyond the misty barriers and darker canyons.

Not as good of a view as from Hlidskjalf, but still impressive.

He stepped up onto the balcony railing.

A cold wind tugged at his cloak. Made it ripple against the back of his calves. He squinted his eyes and blinked into it, sharpening his vision and focus into hawkish clarity against the wind’s sting.

Then he lifted one boot, and stepped over the edge.

The fall was brief. Only long enough for his arms to stretch out, for the cloak’s feathers to line themselves along his fingers. They reached wide and spread, coating his body. He felt the shift and subtle ripple of magic as his form changed. As his vision altered.

The wind became his ally and he tilted up, flying away from the citadel in the guise of a dark bird.

He flew for a very, very long time.

Yggdrasil’s leaves were not always leaves. Nor were its branches always ash. Loki flew, and sometimes walked, and other times climbed further and down. Further and down. Passing through the fires and mists that bordered the Realms, slipping as a shadow beyond the notice of the monsters who stood guard, until he came to the great tree’s roots.

The roots were always roots.

Here, there was no light, save for the pale glow that emitted from the roots themselves. (Or, more likely, from the pool of water beneath them.) The only sound was a distant, steady breathing and the scrape of Loki’s boots as he climbed down the tangle of naked treeveins. He didn’t stop until he reached the bottom.

Then he lifted the cloak from his head, pushing it back to show himself.

No illusions. No tricks. He walked without stopping through the dark stone archway framed by tree roots, ignoring the eyes that followed him.

Inside, the dark lay heavy, save for the glimmer of underlit water.

“You visit us again, Laufey’s Son,” said a chorus of three voices, speaking together in the nothing. “Do you fear we grow lonely?”

“You know why I’ve come,” Loki said, breathing slowly in the thin air. It made him dizzy to inhale it too quick.

“Oh yes,” said one voice.

“We know,” said another.

“You have asked us...”

“...the same thing...”

“...twice now, to our recollection.”

“Why do you...”

“...come again?”

“Are you not the weavers of all men’s fates?” Loki smiled, tilting his head with a playful tone. “Do you not already know my answer?”

The voices spun about him in the air, speaking at one moment from one direction, then another. Spinning and swirling their echoes.

“We know.”

“Just as you know.”

“Our answer.”

Loki’s hands tightened into fists at his sides.

“I will not stop asking until you give me what I want,” he said, no longer playful.

“We do not give.”

“We take.”

“What you ask is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible.” Loki lifted his head to the dark. If he tried, he could just make out the individual forms of roots forming the ceiling of the gnarled cavern. As for the runes carved within them, they were unreadable. Forever changing.

He willed his hands to relax.

“You want something in trade,” he said, breathing a carefully measured exhale. “That’s what it will take.”

A trickle of laughter flowed through the dark. Like the scrape of wind through tree branches.

“I can offer you something truly unique.” Loki lowered his voice to a hiss. “Something no one else in this world may possess.”

“You realize what you’re saying, little Laufeyson?”

“It is no small thing.”

“Your brother is growing suspicious.”

Loki scoffed.

“Thor doesn’t know anything. He’s amply distracted.”

He turned a slow circle, as if to follow the voices.

“And if you truly know the threads of fate, then you know I mean what I speak.” He smiled at nothing, opening his hands wide. “How could I possibly manage to deceive you?”

“You do not deceive us, trickster.”

“Liesmith.”

“Silvertongue.”

“But men greater than you have come asking for much the same.”

“The price...”

“...was always too high.”

Loki twitched.

“Those men were not me,” he growled.

That twirl of laughter again.

“No...”

“...little Laufeyson...”

“...they were not.”

Loki felt a rumble in the ground at his feet. A sound far over his shoulder like a snort of breath.

The sound of raw, creaking wood being ground to nothing filled the quiet.

“Do as you will,” said the voices. “And we may yet concede your wishes.”

“We already know how this ends.”

“And know you will proceed in spite.”

“I thank you, dear ladies.” Loki bowed with a sweep of his hand. “You are far too kind.”

Fate laughed, but Loki paid it no heed as he turned and departed, to begin the long, slow climb back to the surface.


	2. Empires of Faith Unravel

Loki slept for a very long time.

The journey across Yggdrasil was always a draining one.

Fortunately, by the time he returned, Thor had gone back to Earth – presumably to meet with his Avenger friends – and so was not present to ask any ceaselessly annoying questions as to where Odin had gone. Any other prying inquiries were easy enough to divert with a sharp word and command not to be disturbed.

Odin needed his sleep, after all.

The sound of ravens’ wings, however, was harder to ignore.

Loki groaned and rolled over in the massive bed, throwing an arm over his eyes to block out the morning’s light.

“Leave me,” came his voice, muffled. “An old man needs his sleep.”

Huginn cawed. Muninn flapped her wings. Their claws scraped and tapped the metal perches where they paced near the bed. The sound made Loki think of the quiet tick of time.

How Odin ever slept with these birds forever hanging about was beyond his comprehension.

He glared out from beneath his arm at them, met by the turn and flash of one dark eye.

“What?” he snapped. He could feel Odin’s presence behind their intent gaze. Seeing through their eyes.

One of the birds fluffed its feathers to make itself look bigger.

“I thought the point of this arrangement was so you would not micromanage everything?” Loki grumbled.

The birds turned their heads as one in unnatural coordination, eying him sidelong.

Loki huffed.

“Of course I haven’t forgotten. You remind me every day.”

The birds stared.

“You’re supposed to be resting, old man.” Grumbling, Loki grabbed a pillow and rolled over, pulling it tight around his head. “Stop your prying. I know what I’m doing, or have you not been paying attention?”

The birds cawed again a sound of dissatisfaction. Nagging. Like nails against his senses. Loki ignored their squawking and scraping for as long as he could bear, then sent a blast of magic at the perch to scare them both away.

They took off through an open window, throwing their curses back at him until they were gone.

He went back to sleep.

*****

The second attack came shortly after.

It came during the day, as Asgard went about its business in seeming normalcy.

There were no attempts at negotiation. No entreaties. There were no communications at all, simply a blast sudden and hard against the outer shielding to herald the ships as they dropped from the sky. The bombardment shook even the citadel down to its foundations.

Loki deployed Asgard’s forces to the borders on all sides: squads accordingly led by Sif, Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg, arranged and designed to each individuals’ strength. Asgard was duly surrounded, but with only narrow breaches opened in the shielding where attacks had managed to penetrate, it was still highly defendable.

Loki reclined on Odin’s throne, one hand thoughtfully to his lips.

“My king,” said Sif, pausing as the others turned to carry out their orders. “Will you lead us?”

Loki shook his head.

“Not this time, good lady.” A small, reassuring smile answered her frown. “I trust you and all your capabilities to defend us. Lead your warriors well. Hold your ground, however long you must fight.”

Sif tipped her head, but her gaze fell less than certain upon him. Loki said nothing more until she had bowed and gone.

He closed his eyes, face serene as he listened to the blasts and explosions as they struck against the outer shields without relent. A sort of music in their fury. He listened to the sounds of Asgard’s citizens as they hurried for shelter and cheered on the warriors.

It was not in their nature to scream.

“My king,” Heimdall intoned, standing near. “Shall I send for Thor?”

“No.” Loki slid easily up to his feet. “Not now. You are to remain here, as before. Should the enemy break through, you will defend this place to your last breath.”

He glanced aside to the Gatekeeper, whose vigilant gold eyes followed him as he descended the steps.

“This will be a bloodier battle than before,” Loki narrated, detached, with sing-song rumination. “The enemy has tested our tactics once already. The same tricks will not work twice. We shall have to fight longer. Harder.”

Heimdall said nothing. He only watched him.

Loki glanced back over one shoulder.

“Do you ever fear we will be overrun, Heimdall?” he asked, his mouth quirking up in half amusement.

Heimdall’s expression never once shifted from its stoic calm.

“No,” he said.

“And why not?”

“We will die first.”

Loki laughed. “Oh! How I value your pragmatism.”

He left Heimdall behind as he strolled leisurely from the throne room, his steps light, almost dancing to the music of battle beyond the citadel walls. He made his way in no great hurry down through the corridors, empty as all but the fewest necessary soldiers had been deployed to the front lines. He hummed as he went, a song bright and cheerful, reaching out a hand to trail along stone walls and tapestries – newly cleaned, he was pleased to see – until he reached the deepest area of the weapons’ vault.

The small contingent of guards who had been left to keep watch at the vault’s only entrance – the only obvious one, anyway – lay dead across the newly polished floor. Loki stepped over them, the tap of Gungnir’s end keeping an odd beat between the sound of his boots.

He found more aliens inside, having crawled in through the walls and barely-there cracks of Asgard’s solidity. Those paths he normally kept for his own use.

These were a different sort of invader than before. Smaller. Sleeker. Faces hidden as they worked silently to undo the runes protecting the Tesseract’s storage place.

Loki watched them a moment, tilting his head to one side.

“I see Thanos still refuses to take me seriously,” he said when he finally spoke.

The aliens startled and turned, bristling high ridges along their backs and shoulders. They made sounds like the rapid chatter of insects, and eyed him only a moment in wariness before they fell on him. An agile and coordinated swarm.

Fortunately, Loki could make a swarm of himself as well.

He bared his teeth and met them, producing a flux of body doubles to every side as he moved, promptly confusing their attack. Gungnir in one hand, he knocked them from the air and impaled them into stone walls as they slashed at his shades. Those who insisted upon rising again were blasted with magic.

When they got too close, he grabbed their throats and faces with his bare hand. Skin and flesh peeled away under his palm as it was burned black with icy fire. The resulting blue and raised marks that crept up his arm disrupted the illusion he cast about himself, but by the time it fell, it mattered little. The intruders were dead.

Loki looked around at the bodies as he caught his breath, nudging one with his boot.

A grated gate slid open along the vault wall and the Destroyer stepped forward, standing ready for its orders.

Loki glared at it, blowing a lock of hair from his face.

“A great help you are.”

He had it blast the bodies beyond recognition to hide the evidence of just how they had been killed.

*****

Thor was not pleased when he returned.

“Asgard under siege,” he rumbled, pacing in his anger. “Invaders penetrating the citadel, and you did not send for me?”

Loki did not look at him, focusing instead on a bowl of water and swath of bandages before him as he saw to the wound on his side. (He had not escaped the skirmish in the weapons’ vault entirely unharmed, and he would not let the healers see to him.) A crushed healing stone made the water sparkle, and it stung no small amount as he pressed a damp cloth against himself.

“As you can see,” he grunted, concealing his wince. “We did quite well on our own.”

It was a point Thor could not argue. The city had suffered mildly from what enemies managed to make it through the shields, but the damage was minimal. Nothing that couldn’t be rebuilt.

Still, Thor fumed, pausing at an open window to look out towards the sunset.

“I would fight at your side whatever the peril, father,” he said.

“That is good to know.” Loki settled the bandages into place, sucking in a tight breath between his teeth. “And I do not doubt it. But your fear is misplaced, my son. We possess the greatest warriors the Nine Realms have to offer, and the best shielding dwarves can build.”

“And if the shields fail, as they did when the dark elves attacked?” Thor looked to him.

Loki shrugged one shoulder.

“They will not.”

“It only took them smuggling in one prisoner to manage it.”

“A mistake that will not be repeated.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Simple. We are no longer accepting prisoners.”

Loki smiled, looking aside to him at last, the better to see Thor’s shocked and slightly disturbed drop of his mouth. He always had been terrible about schooling his expressions.

Delight curled in Loki’s gut at his reaction.

“How fare your Midgardian friends?”

Thor blinked, the change of subject promptly throwing off his trail of thought. He shut his mouth and tightened his jaw, though the fists he clenched at his sides gradually relaxed.

“Well enough,” he said. “If you care to know.”

“Oh, but I do care. A great deal.”

“You do not have to feign interest in them, father.” Thor shook his head.

“But I am interested.” Loki settled a tunic over himself, smoothing down the soft fabric across his chest, his movements ginger. “I take a great deal of interest when it comes to you and with whom you associate.”

Thor only let him divert for so long.

He looked at him harshly.

“How did you know they would have infiltrated the vault?”

“The attack was a distraction. A way to draw our forces away from the citadel. The true aim was always the vault. It’s only what I would have done in their place.” He reached out, and patted Thor on the shoulder as he drew him in, walked him away from the window. “In battle, one must learn to think as the enemy does. I should think you would have learned that by now.”

“But how did they get in?”

“Old breaches can be reopened, just as they can be sealed. Stronger than before.”

The truth was Loki had made the breaches lax on his own. Prey was easier to kill when it willingly stepped into a trap.

“I would that you had called,” Thor continued to pout. “You were wounded. What would happen if Asgard’s king were to fall?”

“Why, then, you would take my place.” Loki shrugged. “Or not, as your conscience dictates.”

“And if I was not there?”

“I imagine Sif would fancy a sit upon the throne for a time. Or perhaps Volstagg. No enemy would be able to unseat him.”

Loki laughed, but Thor did not share his humor.

“I do not think this the time for jests.”

“If not now, then when?” Loki looked to him. “You continue to fret when I continue to try and ease your worries. The battle is won. There is feasting to be had. All is well, Thor, and it will continue to be well.” And he feigned a pout. “Or would you rather see an old man worry himself to death? My hair is already long turned white, and could I possibly have room for more wrinkles?”

“It is possible to worry too little,” Thor mumbled.

“You have not spoken of your mortal love as of late.” Loki raised an eyebrow as Thor’s gaze shot to the ground. “Would that better your mood?”

“Jane is...” Thor’s voice trailed away to nothing. He looked aside, a bob in his throat as he swallowed. “My friends and I have focused our efforts on searching for the infinity stones.”

“And what have you found?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, that’s fortunate.” Loki clapped his shoulder, smiling again. “I should hate for any more of them to turn up on poor, unsuspecting Earth.”

*****

The depths of Asgard’s citadel were full of old rooms and forgotten chambers, some of them as ancient as the founding of the Realm itself. Such places had been carved into the land’s hearty stone to serve as grounding for the rest of the citadel to rise above. To maintain its stability. Many of them had long been relegated to wine cellars or storage closets over the years, ignored and uncared for as they fell into various states of misuse.

It made them perfect to serve Loki’s purposes.

As a child, he had explored these places – some on his own, other times with Thor, the two of them playing adventure games in areas of the citadel from which they had been strictly forbidden – and he now sat alone in dark privacy, the door sealed. Floor, walls, and ceiling had been lined with glowing runes to keep out prying eyes.

It was one of the smaller closets. Out of the way. Easily overlooked.

Circles and spells coated the floor where they were traced in fine powders and inks.

Loki knelt among them, his head bowed.

The blue glow of the Tesseract in its casing filled the room with a soft, shifting light.

Loki’s skull ached with the effort of concentration, but he did not cease his focus.

He could feel them. Not...close, though their relative proximity given the entire reach of the cosmos still felt too close for him to be entirely comfortable. If he strained, followed the ebb and flow of the Tesseract’s guidance, he could seek them out.

_One._ Here. With him.

_Two._ Entombed in a vault on a distant planet.

_Three._ Stashed away in a private horde.

_Four._ Nearby. Coming...closer...?

Loki gasped and jolted as he snapped his senses back to himself, dropped down to the floor on his backside where he sat and caught his breath. He looked up with narrowed eyes as the Vision faded into view, seeping through the darkness of the walls as if the stone was not at all present.

“I know you can bypass my wards,” Loki grumbled, pushing back his hair. He wiped sweat from his brow. “But I would appreciate at least a little warning.”

“I am sorry,” Vision said, dipping his voice in sincerity. “Mr. Stark has been striving to make me remember that ‘walls are a thing.’”

Loki rested his face against his hand, breathing a little easier.

“What do you want?”

“You called me.” The Vision tilted his head, looking to him in curiosity.

Loki frowned.

“Not...as such,” he nodded. “But I can see how you would think so.”

Vision drifted closer to the center of the room, then lowered himself. He knelt on the floor opposite where Loki sat, the blue glow of the Tesseract reflected in his suddenly focused gaze.

Loki tensed, watching him in perfect stillness.

“That is the Tesseract?” he said.

“Yes,” Loki answered

“It houses an infinity stone inside?”

“Yes it does.”

“Space...”

Vision reached out. Loki’s hand clenching into the leathers that clad him allowed him to refrain from smacking his hand away – or outright stabbing it – though the hem of his coat suffered.

Vision did not touch, but passed his palm in a gentle arc over the Tesseract’s casing. As one might caress a favorite pet, or test the warmth of a flame. Loki watched as his eyes dilated and contracted, reacting to something Loki could not see.

“You are trying to find the others,” he spoke at length.

“Yes.” Loki rubbed at his mouth as he thought. “The infinity stones were created together. They can sense one another. If I channel the power this stone possesses, it may lead me to the rest.”

“Why do you want them?”

“I don’t.” Loki snapped, sudden and sharp. “I want to...prevent someone else from finding them.”

It wasn’t entirely true. Given the chance, Loki would not throw the gems back should they land in his possession. But that was another matter.

Loki eyed the Tesseract once more with slitted suspicion. And the gem upon the Vision’s brow. Perhaps regarded it with hate.

Then again, maybe he’d had his fill of magic gems.

“How many have you located thus far?” Vision continued to ask, seemingly unfazed by Loki’s change of tone.

“Four.” It only then occurred to Loki to think it strange that he should tell Vision any of this. Perhaps it was easier than trying to dissuade him. He had already proven the futility of that. “Two remain.”

“The Avengers have uncovered no evidence of where any of the others may reside. Though they have also been somewhat...distracted.”

“Just as well,” Loki murmured. “They’re better off not knowing.” He tilted his head. “Will you relay to them what I’ve just told you?”

Vision was quiet a moment, looking thoughtfully down at the Tesseract.

“No,” he said.

The edge of Loki’s mouth twitched.

“Why not?”

“It has not been their main focus. Current events are proving more important. And...” He hesitated a moment. “I believe it would cause more harm than good for them to know.”

Loki’s smile bloomed more fully. As did the relief through his limbs.

“I believe you’re right.”

“Though should they ask, I would prefer not to lie to them.”

“Of course.” Loki gestured with one hand. “You must always do what you think is right.”

Vision settled down onto his knees with his hands in his lap, mirroring the stance in which Loki sat. He bowed his head forward to indicate the blue glow between them.

“Perhaps I can be of some assistance?”

Loki raised an eyebrow.

Vision explained.

“Two stones may have more of a chance in finding the others than one?”

It was a logic Loki could not rightly argue. He considered for a moment, shrugged one shoulder, and gestured his agreement.

“Very well.”

They sat together. Vision remained quiet and still as Loki wove his magic: gestures through the air and great sweeps of his hand across the floor, setting alight stretches of runes and intricately-drawn circles.

The Tesseract and mind gem’s power pulsed. Wove together in perfect blue-yellow harmony.

Loki closed his eyes, and concentrated.

Vision was right.

He could feel the gems much stronger this way. They reached out, each one connected to the other, seeking contact with faint, intangible grasps. Like a family too long parted. Even across vast expanses of galaxy and ancient cosmos, they called. Wanting to be found. Wanting to be reunited. Seeking strength in numbers. Shelter. Togetherness...

Loki’s brow darkened.

There was something else. Something contained within. A presence. A black hand sweeping across stars and systems, snuffing them out as easily as one would wipe cards from a table.

Loki remembered.

He remembered the gnash of teeth. The searing in his flesh. He remembered the pain of memory and the weight of eyes and the cold feel of the scepter in his hands. The light working its way inside him. Cutting. Stripping. Invading. Leaving no secret or dark crevice concealed. It ripped. Tore. Forced its way in. It kept ripping and tearing and he wanted to hide—

_stop_

_make it stop_

But the hunger was never sated. It would only be satisfied by everything. Everything. It consumed and ravaged and raped and destroyed and Loki remembered the stardust on his skin and the grief and pain and hate and _rage_ —

He didn’t know how long he must have screamed, only that Loki’s throat was raw with it when he returned to himself. His hand clenched tight around Vision’s throat and held him pressed against a wall, the side of him shredded where Loki’s dagger had found its mark over and over again.

Loki’s breath caught.

He stared down at the blade as it slid from red and silver flesh, its consistency not quite that of living tissue.

The blade was clean.

There was no blood, and Loki watched as the wounds closed.

“I can take this pain from you,” Vision whispered, impossibly soft as he touched Loki’s shoulder. “If you wish it.”

“What?” Loki trembled, jolting at the contact.

“Your memories. What Thanos did to you. They cause you such pain.” Vision’s face wrenched in genuine sympathy, and he touched the gleaming yellow stone on his brow. “This gem has the power to remove them, if it would—”

“No!”

“But what you are planning—”

“I said _no!_ ”

Loki jerked back. Tore himself away. He turned the dagger he had summoned between his hands, long fingers trembling and fixated on the blade.

Then, calmer, as his heart slowed: “No. I need this. I need this pain.” He looked down at the dagger. How it gleamed and caught the light. “Pain is the best reminder. As part of life as all other memories. To remove that is to...is to...”

He took a deep breath. Held it.

Vision looked at him.

“I think you should tell Thor.”

The sound of that name snapped Loki back to himself.

He shook his head, jaw clenched.

“Absolutely not.”

“Great discord surrounded my creation because of secrets,” said Vision. “I think it would bring him more joy than pain to know the truth. And it would soothe you as well.”

“And what would a construct know of it?” Loki sneered, snapping his way. “Do not presume to advise me on matters you could not possibly comprehend.”

The Vision said nothing.

“You should not be here.” Loki turned to storm out. He snatched up the Tesseract’s casing and concealed it, quieting the runes about the small chamber with a dismissive wave of his hand. He did not look back, though he could feel the eyes on his retreating back as much as he could feel the lingering burn of the mind gem in his thoughts.

“Leave,” he said. “And take that stone with you.”

*****

The third attack came at dawn, when the sun had not yet risen over Asgard’s horizon. When the sky was the color of iron. Low clouds concealed the tops of distant mountains, bloated with the promise of impending rain.

Loki stood at the head of his army, gaze turned up to the warships as they dropped out of space. Shimmering into sight from nothing.

“Shall I send for Thor, my king?” asked Heimdall. Thor was again away on Midgard.

“No,” answered Loki, as he had every other time Heimdall asked. “We do not need him.”

The belly of the nearest warship opened, birthing forward a swarm of fighters, the design and craft of which Loki knew painfully well. Shrieks filled the sky, and the sound of gnashing, chattering teeth sent ratfeet scurrying down Loki’s spine.

Chitauri.

“You have asked for annihilation,” boomed a voice over the sky, reverberant in Loki’s mind. “Now you shall have it.”

Asgard’s armies fell still, and watched, as giant cannons emerged from the ship’s hull and open fired on the shields.

They blasted through in less than a minute.

Gold shimmered across the choked sky as the fields of energy flickered, then went out.

Leviathan uncoiled from their harnesses along the ship’s sides.

Chitauri descended like a cloud of hungry locusts.

“Protect the citadel,” Loki issued his orders. “They must not reach the weapons’ vault!” He took to the air, charging forward on Sleipnir’s fiery hooves.

“For Asgard!” Sif ran hard at his flanks, shouting an echo that rippled across Asgard’s forces from every throat as they drew weapons plunged into battle.

The sound of thunder as they struck rivaled even Thor’s. 

Chitauri died like the squealing wretches they were under Asgardian sword and spear. In turn, they sank their teeth into Asgardian flesh, firing weapons fused to their limbs and sparing no thought for their own preservation as they rammed into horses and ships. Loki dodged blasts of blue fire and cut swaths through their ranks with sweeps of Gungnir’s power. His heels dug into Sleipnir’s flanks and drove him on directly for the ships overhead, eyes sweeping in all directions in search for one singular form.

He did not see Thanos, but he could feel him near. Smug. Waiting.

“Attack the ships,” he told the Destroyer and Heimdall, who stood alone on the Bifrost, sword in hand. All he needed, really.

That seemed to do the trick.

The Destroyer blasted holes in warships and brought down the roiling coils of leviathan monsters, crashing them into the water at the Bifrost’s edge.

Finally, a slot opened in one of the ships, and _he_ appeared.

Loki let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“If it is death you seek,” spoke Thanos, voice an omnipresent rumble even outside his ship. “You should not resist so strongly.”

Loki said nothing. He paused in the midst of the fighting, blasts and explosions and dying screams raining down around him. Thanos’ sneering, condescending grin held the power of ages, unaffected by the death on all sides, except in how it made him radiant with glee.

Loki swallowed against a very, very dry throat.

“For you, I wanted to come myself,” Thanos grinned. “You should feel honored. I do not often waste my time face to face.”

“Neither do I,” Loki whispered.

Then he turned Sleipnir’s reins and ran.

“Allfather!” Sif shouted, her face twisting at what she perceived to be Odin fleeing the battlefield.

“Defend the citadel!” Loki shouted to her, and did not stop. He spurred Sleipnir on back towards the Bifrost, Thanos following close behind. Blasts fired from Thanos’ platform, making Sleipnir shriek where they scalded his flanks, but Loki would not stop. He slowed only when he reached Heimdall’s observatory, landing on the roof and turning a circle to face Thanos’ approach.

He held Gungnir ready, bearing his teeth in a snarl.

“You will never breach the vault!” he shouted.

Thanos descended slowly, the spread of his grin only growing wider over his teeth.

“But I don’t have to reach the vault, do I?” he said. Loki’s face fell pale and slack.

Thanos chuckled. Dark. Deep.

“I’ve already considered every possible plot and tactic you could have ever conceived, little king. You cannot hope to win.”

Loki hesitated only a moment, his mind flooded suddenly with the memory of endlessly dark days that bled into pitches of night. Slowly drifting asteroids and madness. The planning. The long, aching hours of obsession as he thought of nothing else but Thor. Thor and home. Thor and home and the gems. And revenge.

The gems.

“Heimdall,” Loki shouted. “Now!”

Below in his observatory, Heimdall slammed his sword into its activation slot in the center of the landing pad, and a panel in the domed rooftop opened near Loki’s feet. Loki skipped back to avoid it, and waved his hand, igniting the Tesseract in its casing where it had been hidden inside. Far from the actual vaults.

Sparks ignited, and a blue beam of energy shot through the air, enveloping Thanos and spreading to consume the whole of his army as the portal opened wide. Then wider.

Where it led was simple. The furthest, most desolate part of the galaxy as Loki understood it to be, dropping leviathan and Chitauri and warship into abandoned space. Right near a black hole, if he recalled correctly.

“Fall back!” Sif shouted to the troops, doing the best they could with so little warning.

The Tesseract screamed as Loki opened it still wider, driving its power without mercy, shaping it into a gaping maw that swallowed Thanos’ army whole. He slammed it shut only once the last warship disappeared. Sudden and heavy quiet replaced the sound of battle.

A few scattered Chitauri remained that had escaped the blast, but they were easily picked off.

Loki let out a long breath.

His shoulders eased.

Then he watched as Thanos stood from a braced crouch atop the observatory roof. His skin burned black in places and trailed electric-scented smoked, but he was otherwise unharmed.

“I’ve studied the power of the gems since time out of mind,” he rumbled, taking great delight in the raw look of terror upon Loki’s face. “Did you truly think that would work?”

He reached out and snatched Loki up by his throat, ripping him off Sleipnir’s back, who bucked and ran. Loki blasted Thanos against his belly with Gungnir’s edge.

Thanos smacked it from his hand.

Loki formed a blade of ice and aimed for his throat.

Thanos broke his wrist.

He tried to flee, to teleport away, but Thanos held fast, crushing his grip around Loki’s throat.

“Now,” he hissed, deceptively affectionate. “Thank you for delivering me my gem.”

With his free hand Thanos reached down and ripped the Tesseract from its placement. Loki scratched and clawed uselessly against his arm as he crushed the blue cube in his fist. Shards fell away, and the stone that emerged glowed unnaturally, reflecting in both their eyes.

Thanos closed his hand around it.

“Now.” He squeezed Loki’s throat tighter. “How would you like to meet my mistress?”

The Destroyer blasted Thanos’ back. Thanos shrugged it off. Sif rallied a squad of warriors and attacked. He sent them back with a sweep of his hand and the space gem’s power.

Loki’s vision grew darker and less focused as he coughed and struggled, but never stopped fighting. He could still see well enough, feel the surge of power, as the Bifrost opened and poured energy into space.

“No,” he gasped, breathless. “No, no…no…”

The Avengers came through, landing at the bridge’s edge in ready formation.

“Ah,” said Thanos, turning half away. “And you bring me a second gem. How very thoughtful.” He pulled Loki close. “You always were my best agent.”

Loki kicked at his chest.

“Not to worry, little king. Death will come to us all in time.”

He threw Loki aside, over the edge of the observatory and onto the Bifrost. There, Loki had the perfect view to watch as he coughed and caught his breath, and the Avengers attacked.

To their credit, they fought bravely.

Thor led the way with a berserker’s roar. A flying warmachine followed behind, as did a watchful angel. A woman wielding blood red magic and the assassin he’d met in the glass cage – Romanov, wasn’t it? – filled their ranks. The good Captain was also present, as so was the Vision.

Loki would later be grateful he didn’t see Hulk among them.

They fought bravely.

And foolishly.

It was all over very soon.

“Father!” Thor landed beside him, helping Loki to his feet. Loki winced, holding his arm close against his chest. “Are you alright?”

“Fool,” Loki hissed. “You _fool_ …you should not have brought them here…!”

They raised their eyes to where the battle raged. Thanos stood strong against them, batting aside blasts of energy and useless bullets.

Vision flew too close in the midst of it, pulling the red witch out of harm’s way. That was when Thanos grabbed him by the neck and held him aloft.

“There you are, my beauty.”

The girl screamed. Loki may have, too.

Thanos ripped the mind stone from Vision’s skull. It broke free with a crackle of energy, and a painful, faintly digitized scream.

Thanos let him drop.

“This has been amusing,” he rumbled, holding now two glowing gems of power in his fist. “But I must go. There are other worlds to kill.”

He raised his fist, and a beam of blue power shot from the space gem. It opened a portal through which he stepped, and closed behind him, leaving Asgard with the warped and twisted energy left unstable behind.

Thor sheltered Loki with his body, and the others only barely had time to get to safety before it imploded, destroying the Bifrost, observatory, and half the city in its blast.


	3. Whose Hand Commands This Thunder

Half the city of Asgard that only earlier that day sprawled under the protective shadow of the citadel lay collapsed in ruin. Smoke trailed into the sky over piles of burning, charred debris. In spots scattered throughout the destruction, bright points of color shone through: a collapsed statue or a torn flag. Signs that had once been a shop front. Even the citadel itself had not escaped the full effects of the portal’s blast. Half of it sagged, a wounded mother bird. Crippled, but still striving to brood over her children and ruined nest.

The wails of the living rose over the city like ghosts: a chorus of one heart breaking.

The dead were silent and still. Loki had not yet heard a number for the body count.

And the Bifrost?

The Bifrost was gone. What remained of the bridge shot jagged out of the city’s side like a broken arrow shaft. Blackened and dark. Shards of it floated in the water to all sides, still sparkling when they turned at just the right angle.

On top of all else, the clouds that had hovered over the realm since dawn chose that moment to open up and pour down their rain, completing the scene of dismal misery.

Perhaps that was Thor’s doing.

Loki dwelled of none of it. His mind was elsewhere. Far away. Letting himself become lost in the mindless repetition of brushing Sleipnir’s mane.

He’d brought the horse back to stable in the wake of the destruction. The stable was a poor one, not Sleipnir’s properly, half rotted and leaking rainwater, but it was the best left to be had. The citadel’s lay crushed under heaps of rock and mortar.

Loki saw to Sleipnir’s burns and brushed his mane, singing softly to him to soothe the noble horse’s nerves while the rain dripped outside: a steady, uninterrupted noise in the background that helped fill the void Thanos’ attack had created. The sound of it was broken only by the odd rumble of thunder.

Asgard was crippled.

Every so often, a bowing, scraping soldier or servant worker would find him, wary in their approach.

“My king?”

“Hrn.”

“Sire, the third guardhouse has been destroyed. What shall we do with the recovered weapons?”

“My lord, we’ve found a pocket of survivors. They require healing.”

“Sire, there is rioting in the market. The building remains are...”

“My lord...”

“My king...”

“...what shall we do with the bodies?”

Loki heard little of it. He responded in low grunts and incoherent mumbles, and kept brushing Sleipnir’s mane.

Brushing. Petting. Untangling knots. Touching their brows together and closing his eyes in soothing contact.

Once he coughed, and wiped a streak of red from his mouth.

Thor took charge in dealing with some of Asgard’s many needs. He gave orders, Sif and the Warriors Three issuing commands where they could. The Avengers helped as well, though Loki saw little of it. It seemed only natural that Captain America and his band of merry do-gooders would step in. Unasked for. Unhesitant to help see to the aftermath of the destruction they had helped create.

Heimdall came to him as well, kneeling and offering to surrender his sword and helm as punishment for having disobeyed Odin’s orders and opened the Bifrost to Thor and his companions.

Loki told him to stop being ridiculous and get back to his post.

He kept on brushing, and brushing, and brushing, singling softly under his breath.

At length, Thor came to him, ducking his head as he entered through the stable’s lopsided entryway.

He spoke gently.

“Father?”

Loki paused in his song, but didn’t look up.

“Hrn?”

Thor hesitated a moment, then gestured to his arm.

“You’ve...not let the healers see to you...?”

Loki glanced down, remembering the state of his shattered wrist. He’d managed to forget, holding it tucked in against himself, and still. Weilding the brush with his off hand.

“No,” he murmured.

“You should let them. Your wound has reopened.”

Thor stepped in closer, took hold of a low stool and dragged it with him, indicating Loki’s side. Loki’s eyes fell to fresh red stain that had bloomed beneath his armor from the injury he’d suffered in the weapons’ vault.

He hadn’t noticed that either.

“Oh,” he said, breathing out.

Thor coaxed him away from Sleipnir and bade him sit. Loki went, though his eyes remained avoidant. His gaze distant. He offered no resistance to taking a seat and watching as Thor fashioned a crude splint for his wrist, rigging it with a strap from an old bridle and broken pieces of wood.

“I am sorry,” he breathed, as he fit the splint to hold Loki’s arm secure against his chest, in doing so pressing too hard where he was tender. “Clumsy hands.”

Loki said nothing.

Thor worked for a moment in silence, kneeling as he saw to the wound on Loki’s side. He was no healer, but Thor could at least clean it.

“There is talk among the others of going after the stones,” he said quietly as his hands busied themselves, gaze flickering upward to gauge Loki’s reaction.

Loki pressed his lips tightly together.

“Oh,” he said.

“The Bifrost is gone, but you have sent me to Earth before without its use...”

Loki glanced to Thor’s eyes, catching them in the stable’s muddy light. The hope and gentility in them shone as clear as a blue sky after a rain. Impossibly blue, stretching up and up without end, no matter how one craned their neck to try and take in all of it at once.

“...could send us after him.”

“What?” Loki’s brow furrowed, as some of his sense returned. He’d stopped listening.

“Thanos,” said Thor, though he kept his voice low. As if whispering the name would summon the dreaded demon before them. “He cannot be allowed to collect all six infinity stones. He must be stopped.”

“Thanos,” Loki breathed, his gaze falling.

“The Bifrost is gone, but you have the power to travel without it.” Thor smiled. Small. Confident. “We have no means to make the journey on our own. We will need your help.”

“As I recall,” Loki mumbled, speaking at last, “when I sent you to Earth you were knocked into a mountain and lay unconscious for two days.”

“Yes. A thing I am willing to endure again, if it means stopping what may happen.”

There was no hesitation at all in Thor. Not in his eyes. Not in his voice. Not the readied tension in his posture. Loki looked to him for a moment, the space of a long, slow heartbeat, then recoiled and shook his head. Sudden and violent. Closing his eyes under the unbearable strain of his light.

“No...no, no, no, no, no...”

“But father—”

“You caused this,” Loki hissed, digging the fingers of his splinted hand in against the front of his tunic, making pain stab up his arm. It was grounding. “You caused this! You brought them here! Now he has the stones and he will find the others...!”

“All the more reason we should make haste to stop him.”

“You cannot stop him.”

“We must try.”

“He will kill you.”

“Then we will die.”

“ _No!_ ”

Loki smacked Thor’s hands away from him, a sharpness returning at last to his eyes. He stood from his seat with a suddenness that startled Sleipnir nearby. Made him snort and shift his weight.

“You don’t understand, Thor! You cannot stop him! He’s...he...the Mad Titan cannot be stopped!” Loki shouted and gestured wildly. “Two gems are already more than enough...! You have no idea...you cannot begin to fathom...what he is capable of...!”

Thor stood back away from him, letting him rage. His hands remained lowered at his sides, purposefully still.

When he spoke, it was very, very quiet.

“But you can?” he said.

Loki’s breath caught in his throat.

He shook his head again, shutting his eyes, insides clenching.

“Sending you to Midgard took an extraordinary amount of power and calling upon dark energies,” he said. Rambling. “You know how it crippled me. Sending the lot of you to the other side of the galazy is another matter entirely!”

“Yet you know where to send us.” Thor’s voice grew suddenly dark, fixing him with a harsh glare. “Is this the secret you have been keeping, father? Did you know this would happen?”

Loki’s heart all but stilled. His thoughts snapped ahead in attempted compensation.

“I...had my suspicions.”

For a moment, Thor was still.

Then he turned and grabbed Mjolnir from his belt, hurtling it with one angry roar into a nearby pile of rubble. Stone and debris exploded into dust, scattering across puddles of collected rain like meteors in a tiny storm. The noise startled Sleipnir again and Loki reached up to catch his reins, touching his neck in an effort to calm.

Thor held out his hand, and Mjolnir returned to him.

“This could have been avoided if you had been but open with me!” Thor growled.

“Could it?” Loki snapped. “You know better than most, dear Thor, that some storms cannot be swept aside. All you can do is prepare for their onset, and clear a path.”

“I would know what dangers threaten my home! How can I help defend this realm if you refuse to trust me with the truth?”

Loki narrowed his eyes.

“As truthful as you have been with me about sharing your vision?”

Thor snapped his glare to him. His hand tightened around Mjolnir’s grip, as if hurling it at his father would be his next action.

Loki sneered.

“Do not think for an instant I don’t know what goes on in my citadel at night. What dark thoughts of incest you harbor for that wretch. Did you think I did not know?” Loki did so enjoy the pale slack that overtook Thor’s features then. The way his jaw dropped and shock choked any sound he might have made.

Loki gained nothing from his attack beyond the satisfaction of shaming him. Humiliating him. He would have said anything to see him flounder.

“Tell me, Thor, if your so-named brother were still alive, would you indulge these twisted desires or continue to satisfy them alone in your chambers at night?”

Thor remained very still, saying nothing. Resolve tightened in his shoulders as he refused to rise to the taunt.

It was not the reaction Loki wanted, but it was good enough to see him burn.

“We are going after Thanos,” Thor finally spoke, tightly controlling the storm in his voice. “Whether you help us or not. Though our chances of success are much greater with your assistance.”

“Do you recall what happened the last time you rushed off without my permission to save the universe?”

“Yes, because I understood what was at stake. Loki did as well, which was why we defied you. And we were right to do it.”

“And how well did that end for the Jotun wretch?”

Thor tightened his jaw. Sparks flashed behind his eyes.

“Will you help us or no?” he said.

“I will not help you rush to your doom,” Loki hissed. “Let the rest of the galaxy rot.”

Outside, thunder snapped, sudden and hard.

“So be it,” Thor rumbled, and turned to storm out of the stable, taking the swell of dark clouds with him.

*****

Later, Loki walked the quiet halls of the citadel alone.

Late at night, they were empty, servants and guards retired from their posts or else dispatched to work on recovery efforts in the city. That decision had less to do with Loki’s sense of magnanimity and more to do with the fact he simply wanted to be alone.

The interior of the citadel fared only little better than the rest of the city beyond.

Dust coated the floor and every wall where it had settled in the wake of the blast. Great holes had been knocked through the outer walls, allowing the moon’s light to pour in and settle on the floor in jagged pools. Loki could see the lights of funeral pyres beyond, dotting the city like fireflies, as the Asgardians mourned their dead.

He reached out, trailing his hand along one wall to watch the path his fingertip left in the dust. He brushed the tassled edge of a trapestry and watched the ash disturbed rise in a cloud.

They would have to be cleaned again.

He stepped over piles of collapsed wall and framework where it had yet to be cleared.

_Our priority is to see to our people_ , he’d told the soldiers who could still walk, with all the gradiose majesty of a king in full resolve.

Loki scowled, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders.

His steps were tired. Slow.

None of them had slept since it happened.

After the outburst with Thor, Loki had concealed himself in Asgard’s archives, returning to his usual task of pouring over old books in search of information.

Something.

_Anything_ he could use.

But there was nothing.

He could all but hear the laughter of the Norns over his shoulder as he turned a corner, steeling himself against the urge to look back. To cast his darting gaze to every shadow, paranoid they would be there.

At length he reached a chamber that had come to replace the healing room. The original had been destroyed in the blast. The chamber sat similarly empty now, its healers dispatched to where they were more needed elsewhere. Only one bed lay occupied.

The Vision stretched out upon its blankets, unnaturally still. Only his hand moved, stroking gently the hair of the red witch where she had fallen asleep, cheek resting upon her arms crossed over the bedside. The Vision’s eyes stared up at the ceiling, focused on nothing.

Loki supposed he didn’t feel the need for sleep anyway.

He stepped in slowly, careful not to disturb the girl. Her power was...dangerous...and he would prefer to avoid it.

“The healers aren’t certain what to do with you,” Loki said, feigning a casual air as he approached the bedside. “It seems your very existence is not something our practices have prepared for.”

Vision blinked, and looked aside to him. His gaze remained unfocused for a moment, the energy about him somewhat duller. The place on his brow where the mind stone had been remained an ugly black scar, only partially covered in a protective wrap. The healers had seen to it as best their knowledge allowed.

Vision looked at him, then lowered his eyes, his hand ceasing its mindless stroking of the girl’s hair.

“I seem to incite that reaction,” he said quietly. Then his brow furrowed, eyes lifting back to the ceiling. “It is quiet.”

“The others are making preparations.” Loki took a seat on the empty bed adjacent to his, hands folded as he looked down at them.

“To go after Thanos?”

“Yes.”

“I feel I should accompany them.”

“Are you well enough?”

Vision nodded his head, though his eyes remained distant as workings carried on behind them. Tiny shifts and changes in the intricate patterns of his irises.

“As much as I am capable of running diagnostics on myself,” he said, “I believe I am well.”

“Even without the stone?”

“The mind stone helped bring me to consciousness. I retain abilities that do not rely entirely on its presence. Though, I fear...” His gaze fell to the girl. Fingers curled lightly into her hair. “I will not be quite as useful as I was before.”

“Usefulness is not measured by power alone,” Loki muttered. When Vision looked to him questioningly, he shook his head. “Something my mother used to say.”

“You should see to yourself as well,” said Vision, looking him over. “You are ill.”

“I’m well enough.” Loki grumbled and tucked his wounded arm still in its brace tighter against himself.

“I means a great deal to me that you came to visit,” Vision spoke, though with a sound of recitation. As if he tested the words on his tongue even as he spoke them. “After what happened. I did not intend for the stone to fall into Thanos’ hands, and our last words were...harsh.” He nodded his head. “I am sorry.”

“Nevermind that,” Loki sneered. “I only came to see if you possessed any lingering connection to the stone that would tell me where Thanos has gone.”

Vision frowned as he watched him. He took a breath.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe I do.”

“Good. Because Thanos can do the same. The gems sense each other. With two in his possession he will be moving quickly to find the rest. We must act first—”

“Will you tell Thor now that you are alive?”

Loki recoiled, flashing a show of teeth.

“Absolutely not!”

“But what further gain is there to be had by concealing yourself? Your objective was to keep knowledge of the stones limited. Now there is—”

“We’ve had this discussion,” Loki snapped. He bit back the urge to growl further when the girl shifted on the bedside. Frowned in her sleep.

He continued in a harsh whisper.

“Thor does not need to know. Nor will I be lectured by a construct on the matter.”

Vision was quiet a moment. He fell back to gently petting the girl’s hair, smoothing it from her brow. It reminded Loki of how he brushed Sleipnir’s mane in the stable: a similarly mindless task, and wholly different.

“You call me a construct,” said Vision gently. “I am. I have only been among humans a short while. I’ve been told I will never fully understand them, and perhaps that is true. But what I have observed of them is that all their actions, no matter how grand or small, seem to be drawn from the same motivation, over and over.”

“Oh,” Loki drawled, disinterested sarcasm dripping in his tone. “And what is that?”

“Love.”

Loki wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“A perfectly mawkish observation.” He waved his hand. “Can a construct even comprehend such a thing?”

“I don’t know. It has been weighing on my mind.” He looked back to the ceiling, staring at something distant. “I thought, at the time, that I would die when Thanos ripped that stone from me.”

“I’m sure the others did as well.” Loki poured himself a drink of water from a pitcher on a side table.

“It did not frighten me. I’m...not entirely certain I believe in death.”

That, at least, made Loki snort.

“You don’t believe in it?”

“No. One of the first laws of thermodynamics is that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. If that is true, then death is not truly an end. Only a shift in matter.”

Loki sipped his cup as he turned the thought over in his mind.

It made a certain amount of sense. The same could be said to be true of the energies used in magic. It all had to go somewhere...

“But then,” Vision went on, a frown lightly creasing his features, “the more I thought about it, the more the idea of irreversibly changing _did_ frighten me. But not for my sake.” He looked back to the girl. “It was for the sake of others.”

“Empathy,” Loki drawled, unimpressed. “Compassion. Very human traits.”

“That is one way love can be defined, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps.” Loki shrugged. “How fortunate for me, then, that I am not human.”

“No. But I have grown to know Thor better over time, as well.” Vision nodded. “If anything, I believe the extent of his compassion and empathy reaches beyond even that of humans. Perhaps it is an Asgardian trait.”

“Nor am I Asgardian,” Loki muttered darkly.

“But you do love him?”

Loki suffered through a nauseating roll in his stomach, snapping his glare away to look at a random place upon the wall.

“I hate him,” he growled.

“It has seemed to me that hate is a version of love,” said Vision. “Misdirected. Misinterpreted. But no less sincere. If you felt nothing for him, you would be merely indifferent.”

“And where do creatures like Thanos fall on your speculatory observations?” Loki sneered.

“I believe the actions of Thanos are also drawn from a source of love. Or perhaps only desire. For what, I do not know. Conquest? Control?”

_Death_ , Loki thought, tucking his shoulders in tightly.

“You did not involve Thor in your planning because you seek to protect him. You know his sacrificial nature would put him foremost in line to be harmed.”

“He would only make matters worse,” grumbled Loki. “The fool can never refrain from involving himself.”

“That seems to mean that you love him. You care for his well-being.”

“Or I simply refuse to see my plans ruined by a bumbling ox.”

“I wonder...” Vision tilted his head, looking Loki over in a particularly analyzing way. “You are neither human nor Asgardian. I have not encountered one of your kind before.”

“Individuals are more than their race,” Loki muttered. “I am not of Asgard, nor of Jotunheim. I am only myself.”

_And I am alone._

“But, in your experience, do you find you are prone to feeling more or less intensely than the others?”

_More,_ thought Loki, though he said nothing. He closed his eyes and turned his face away, breathing deep. Wondering exactly when and how he had lost control of the conversation. _Much more._

*****

Loki gathered Thor and the Avengers on a balcony built high up on the citadel’s foundation, overlooking the city and pointed exactly north.

The same balcony Loki had stepped off of only a short while ago before assuming his falcon-guise and flying away to see the Norns.

Perhaps it had been built with that cardinal direction in mind.

“Not that I don’t believe in magic at this point,” the man the others called Warmachine said as he made a dubious press of his lips, “but are you sure this is a good idea?”

“How many hours you clocked in that suit?” another chided – the one with wings – and nudged his shoulder. “And you’re still afraid of flying?”

“Flying’s easy,” Warmachine huffed. “It’s being teleported through space at who knows what speed that makes me a little uncomfortable.”

“It will be little different than coming here through the Bifrost,” Thor explained as Loki knelt upon the balcony, making a few final adjustments to the circle he’d drawn upon the stone with charred tree ash.

“Yeah, because that was a hoot.”

“Nobody’s gonna blame you for throwing up a little, Rhodey,” said Romanov without inflection.

“You people should have signs posted. No Bifrosting for at least an hour after you eat. I barely got my faceplate open in time.”

The circle Loki drew consisted of an endless weave of intricate knotwork, lined in runes and the scratching of long spells. They glowed, shimmering faintly in the sunlight as Loki completed them, checked and rechecked to make certain of their accuracy. The end result looked not so different from a mark upon the ground that would have indicated a Bifrost landing site, though anyone with a knowledge of magic could eye the spells and runes – sense the energy they pulled to them, coalescing in dark, tiny swirls – and know this was a different sort of power.

It took three days for Loki to complete the circle. Days in which he spoke to almost no one, did not eat, and avoided the squinting, concentrated looks the red witch gave when she looked at him. He could feel her prodding against his defenses, even now.

“I cannot guarantee the accuracy of projection,” he said as he at last stood, grunting, helped by Thor back to his feet. He wiped his hands, black with ash. “But this is as close as we can measure, given the Vision’s estimates.”

“I will guide us once we land,” Vision nodded. “So long as we are on solid ground and in breathable atmosphere.”

“And the odds of that not happening are…?” Warmachine prompted, but received no answer.

“Worry not, my friend.” Thor smiled and clapped his shoulder reassuringly. Clad in his metal armor, Warmachine and Thor were about the same height. “We have surmounted greater challenges than this.”

“I don’t know.” He remained unconvinced. “Pretty sure intergalactic travel takes the cake.”

“What is this supposed cake?” asked Volstagg, standing ready nearby.

They had all gathered in preparation to leave. The Warriors Three would accompany the Avengers on their quest, as would Sif and Thor. Loki would use a summoning of dark energies to transport them as far as he could reach. From there, it would be the Vision’s connection to the mind stone that would lead them to Thanos.

Tension and nervousness hung thick in the air.

“I would that you were coming with us,” Thor spoke quietly to Loki, while behind Warmachine went on in speculation about how long it would take Iron Man to build them a nice, safe spaceship, and how long that would take them to get where they needed to go. “We could use your help.”

Thor and Loki had spoken only a little since the stables, but their words were civil now. Calm.

“Asgard is vulnerable,” said Loki, his eyes remaining down on the circle. “Thanos will not return. There is nothing he requires here. But other enemies may seek to take advantage of our weakness.”

“Will you be well on your own?”

Loki smiled, not quite concealing his exhaustion.

“I still have the Destroyer, and Heimdall, and my own mind.” He waved a hand dismissively. “I am not so old as to be completely dried up.”

Thor ventured to smile, though it was half-lived. He nodded his head, and reached out to clasp Loki’s forearm in a warrior’s hold.

Loki looked to Thor’s bracers – those he had carved with the emblem of a horned helmet upon them – and reached to take his hand, gripping tightly and for several heartbeats longer than was necessary.

Thor had not slept since Thanos’ army attacked, either. Loki had not been able to visit him under the pretense of a dream.

He had not until now wished that he could have.

“Besides,” said Loki, letting go, “it matters little what happens to this realm if Thanos is not stopped.”

“We will stop him,” spoke Thor with all conviction. “Somehow.”

“We’ll do it together,” spoke the Captain among the others. “Thanos may have the infinity stones, but he’s still just one person. We have what he doesn’t.”

“What’s that?” asked the witch.

“Each other.”

Sage nods bowed all around. Thor pulled away from Loki with one last returned look, then joined the others in the circle.

Loki took a breath, gave them time to brace themselves, and began.

It started slowly, the way change always did. Loki stretched out his hands, bowed his head, and closed his eyes as he focused. Concentrated. Narrowed his thoughts down to the tiny threads of energy woven into the air. They shifted and moved constantly, not just with the wind, but with a thought. A will. The distant beat of a butterfly’s wings. The threads were intangible, but those who knew could pluck them, follow their lines to where they connected to the ground. Wrapped around individuals. Reached up into the sky and built ladders to the stars. The threads connected everything. Connected all. From Yggdrasil’s top branches to its deepest roots.

Odin knew those threads. How to weave them. It was a deep sort of magic: the kind rooted in bone and blood, trapped in physical form only when the first runes were written down.

Loki knew them too. He knew how they connected all things. Realm to realm. Person to person. The threads were the fibrous essence of magic, and with enough power – enough skill – one could spin and skim them with the ease of a spider.

Or send several individuals across the galaxy to a place unseen in one massive burst of power without the use of the Bifrost.

It was taxing, to say the least. When Odin had sent Thor to Earth, it had been only one person and to a realm relatively near, where the boundaries were soft. Thanos in his stronghold would keep its walls fortified. Guarded against intruders.

But Loki gathered the power, so thick it coalesced in the air like twisting black matter, lined in green and golden sparks. He could taste it between the grinding clench of his teeth. Smell it in the sweat that formed on his brow.

Perhaps, if nothing else, it was the thought of doing something that had driven Odin to exhaustion once before, and in greater quantities, that kept his strength from breaking.

The circle ignited all at once, its bright underlight casting strange shadows on the faces of those within.

Loki snapped a look up just in time to see Thor, his gentle eyes, in the instant before they vanished.

“Oh shi--!” the Warmachine began.

A pulse like a broken sound barrier rippled across the balcony, blowing out the lights. The runes burned trailing smoke as would embers in a dying hearth as they erupted, then went out. The force of it knocked Loki back, striking his head on the hard stone of the balcony’s railing.

It jarred a memory to the front of his consciousness. One he’d not thought of in a long time.

_...running through a sunlit field, tall wheat grass reaching the level of his chest..._

_...sharp bursts of insects and pollen rising where they were disturbed, catching the sun in brilliant flashes..._

_...running towards a pair of outstretched arms, who laughed and welcomed him..._

_...flowers woven into her hair...her smile a soothing summer breeze...her eyes soft azure..._

_...speaking his name gently – a little chidingly – at the state of his muddy dress, but delighted by the flowers he’d picked..._

Loki blinked his eyes and shook his head, returning his sight to the cloudless blue sky above. Hot air filled his lungs as he sucked in a breath.

Everything hurt.

He rolled over and retched. Not food – he couldn’t recall the last time he’d eaten – but dark red blood, muddied with a thick black fluid he hacked up like a disease.

Loki wiped his mouth, and pushed himself up to his feet. His steps were staggered. Unsteady. But he stumbled his way to the shade of the tower’s interior, and from there down the stairs, leaning against the wall and panting heavily for breath.

When guards approached to assist him, he shoved them away with a blast of power, throwing them back into the nearest wall.

“Get out! Leave me!” he screamed, hoarse, chasing out guards and servants alike as he made it to the throne room. Black blood stained his lips and trailed still from the corners of his mouth as he slammed the doors shut behind him. They closed with a massive, ominous clang.

The only occupants lingering in the hall were the two ravens.

“Is this what you wanted!” Loki snarled, wiping his mouth and holding a blood-smeared hand as he stumbled forward for the birds to see. “Was this your plan all along? To see me fail?”

Huginn was still. Muninn turned her head and watched him sidelong, eying him with one emotionless black eye.

Loki stumbled as he reached the steps before the throne, falling into a hacking fit of coughs.

He covered his mouth for what little good it did.

“Just another…dead…Jotun, for you to sit on your high seat and dismiss!” On the last word he threw out his hand, splattering blood and taint across the throne’s polished golden surface.

He let the illusion about him drop – Odin, Asgardian, all of it – and stood half-hunched as he watched the blood turn from red to icy blue, still marbled throughout with thick black sickness.

He saw his hand turn its darker shade as well. He clenched it, refusing to succumb to its tremble.

The ravens watched.

“I refuse to give you the satisfaction,” Loki snarled, daring the ravens to mock him now. They only sat on their perches, watching him, feathers lightly fluffed.

Odin was silent.

“ _I will burn this entire realm to the ground before I admit defeat!_ ”

The sound of his words screamed in full fury echoed off the high pillars of the throne room as his voice faded, fell back to labored panting for breath. Loki collapsed on the steps, allowing his body to sag, turning his face away from the throne and its polished surface, lest he catch a reflection of himself.

Loki had never seen what he looked like in his true Jotun form. He did not want to see it now.

“Thor,” he whimpered, broken, as he covered his face with his dirtied hand. “Oh, _Thor…_ ”

The ravens watched, but said nothing. They made no move. No sound of claws or feathers to disturb the heavy quiet.

Loki wept into his hand until he regathered his resolve. Stifling tears and sniffing away the tightness in his throat. His heart still ached and his body screamed in protest, but he pushed himself up. Got to his feet. He turned away, and resumed his disguise as he bid the doors open to head out and search for his own means of transport.

He was not going to sit idly by while he waited for news of whether the Avengers lived or died.

There was somewhere he had to go.

*****

Taneleer Tivan had not had a good couple of days.

First, a shipment of very endangered k’lor’slugs had not arrived on its scheduled date. The animals were incredibly fragile, and had to be handled with utmost care if they were to survive the journey. He had a specially prepared habitat ready for them in one of his many storage houses. The sooner they were put into it, the better off they would be.

But only if they arrived in pristine condition.

Then there was the deal he was brokering on some equally rare flora from the planet Ankara that suddenly fell through. Taneleer learned later that the potential seller had been killed in a back alley deal gone sour.

A tragic loss, really.

Taneleer did so desperately desire those plants.

Then there was the whole matter of the power stone.

That hardly bore thinking about.

Taneleer still wore bandages in places where his burns had yet to heal from the explosion.

Yes, it had been a bad couple of days.

So when a stranger barged into his office without prior appointment or even being announced, Taneleer merely added it to the ever-growing list of his current ailments.

He was going to have to find yet another assistant for the front desk.

“Yes?” he hummed, slipping off his glasses and straightening from where he examined a stone carving under a molecular analyzer. It was a recovered relic from a planet that had been blown up. “How may I help you?”

The man was well dressed. Tall, with dark hair and the sharpest of features. He carried himself with an air of confidence.

“Taneleer Tivan,” he said, and bowed with a formal greeting Taneleer recognized. “The Collector.”

“Yes.” Taneleer stood, and returned the greeting. It was only polite. “You know me, good sir. I am afraid I cannot return the same.”

“It’s of little consequence. We’ve never met.” The stranger set his hand over the top of a cane he carried, standing near the door rather than helping himself to a seat. His other arm had been bound close to his chest. “I’ll spare you my name and much of your time by getting directly to the point.”

“Of course,” said Taneleer, offering to fill a glass with drink set before him on his desk. The stranger waved it away.

“Recently two representatives of Asgard came to you with a special gift,” said the stranger. “A certain rare and powerful artifact.”

Taneleer raised an eyebrow.

The stranger’s expression did not change.

“I am here to take it back.”

“I am afraid I have no idea as to what you’re referring.” Taneleer spread his hands. “Even if I did, I have received no word or request from Odin Allfather authorizing such.”

The stranger tightened his jaw, breathing in slowly through his nose.

“My patience is not in its best condition at the moment, Tivan,” he said, sharp and flint hard. “I know you have the Aether. Return it and I will trouble you no further.”

“Return?” Taneleer hummed, sipping on his drink. “I do not recall making the exchange with you, good sir.”

“I authorized it,” said the stranger, “whether you recall me or not.”

Taneleer’s free hand toyed with a polished statue on his desk, turning it in the light.

“Let me entertain the notion for a moment that I did possess such a rarity,” he said, tilting his head to one side. “The worth of such would be nearly immeasureable.”

“You did not pay when you received it,” the stranger growled, curling his upper lip. “But if that is what you require, you may name your price.”

“It is not for sale,” Taneleer said.

“And I am not negotiating.” The stranger took a step forward. “You have one of the six infinity stones, Collector. I want it. You’ve already experienced firsthand what happened with the power gem, and if you do not rid yourself of the one you have left, someone much less pleasant than myself is going to—”

Four guards burst in through the door behind him, summoned when Taneleer brushed the decoration on his desk (a disguise for the security trigger). They fell on the stranger all at once, who went down beneath them with an infuriated snarl.

Taneleer settled back in his chair, feet kicked up on his desk, and sipped his drink.

“I do not respond well to threats, good sir,” he said over the stranger’s muffled grunting. “I assure you, the Aether is quite safe. The good Thanos – that is who you’re referring to, yes? – will not be able to find it. The incident with the power gem was unfortunate, yes, but I am sure that—”

One of the guards abruptly flew off, slamming into the wall over Taneleer’s shoulder. The others were cast aside as a bright blast of energy erupted, scorching the carpet and ceiling. The stranger impaled one guard on a spear suddenly formed into his hand, and snapped another’s neck with a twist of his arm.

Taneleer’s eyes grew wide.

He recognized that spear.

He scrambled up from his chair and turned, bolting for the rear exit.

A blast hit him in the back. Taneleer grunted as he fell, smacking the wall in a perfectly undignified manner.

“I am sorry!” he gasped as he was rolled over with a kick, then hefted by his throat up into the air. His feet dangled uselessly off the ground, where he dared not struggle. He only clutched at the hand around his throat in a desperate attempt to loosen it so he could breathe. “I am sorry…! I had no idea! If you had said you carried the authority of the Allfather…!”

“I said as much as was necessary,” growled the stranger, paying no further heed to the dead guards around them. His was a quick, deadly efficiency. “Now…”

He pulled Taneleer close, teeth bared before his eyes.

“Where is the Aether?”

The violent desperation Taneleer saw so close in his eyes – they took on a red glint even as he watched – led him to believe cooperation was the best way of escaping this encounter with his life. It was true. He’d paid nothing for the Aether when the Asgardians delivered it to him, with no prompt and very little warning. Their price was only that he keep it safe, away from all outside influences.

As if he needed a reason to protect something he already coveted so greatly.

Perhaps simply being given one of the infinity stones was a thing too good to last.

“Alright…alright!” Taneleer coughed, waving his hand to yield. “I will tell you!”

The stranger set him back down on his feet.

Taneleer breathed a little easier.

“I have stored the Aether in one of my secure warehouses,” he coughed, rubbing his throat. “I will give you the coordinates for its location.”

“Secure,” the stranger snorted, scoffing at the very idea. “No. No deal.”

He grabbed Taneleer’s arm and turned, marching him towards the door.

“You are coming with me.”

*****

The Aether was where Taneleer claimed it to be, so Loki refrained from ending his miserable life.

But they journey was not an easy one.

The Collector cooperated only to a point. Nevermind the pirates and security teams they had to bypass to reach their destination in the first place – that was easy enough for Loki – but Taneleer had not exaggerated when he’d said his warehouse was secure. Traps and failsafes and killswitches had been built into the building’s every design, the codes and paths for which only Taneleer knew (and even he had forgotten some of them as long as he’d been away).

Loki made Taneleer walk before him, disarming and disabling as they went.

The only stumble came in the form of a gas trap Taneleer purposefully set off, blasting Loki’s face with a cloud of foul-smelling smoke that would have killed him, had he been anything other than an Asgardian-Jotun magic user.

As it was, it only made him hallucinate a little. Nothing Loki’s sense of self discipline and will couldn’t shut out while he marched Taneleer the rest of the way to the Aether’s vault.

He ignored the children he saw running suddenly by them in the corridor, the way they shouted and fought in play battle. How their skin slowly cracked and peeled and flesh melted away and dropped off of them in great black chunks, leaving only desiccated skeletons. Ignoring who they resembled.

He marched on, crushing their bones beneath the heel of his boots as he passed.

Finally, they came to the vault. Taneleer opened it.

He withdrew the Aether and handed it over.

Loki threw that one aside, recognizing it for the decoy it was.

Only once he held the true Aether in his hand did he tuck it inside his coat, then cut off one of Taneleer’s for the betrayal.

Loki left him there after disabling the warehouse’s communications array and returned to his ship, allowing the Collector to learn the virtue of just how long he would last in a warehouse full of treasures but no personnel or any outside contact.

Loki stumbled back into the ship that had brought them, setting a course to return to Asgard and not allowing himself to collapse until the airlock closed securely behind him.

Only then did he sleep.

He slept for a very long time.

A deep, fitful sleep, during which he dreamed of speaking to the Norns.

He knelt before them, his fingers dug into the ground where he could feel a giving layer of ash. It shifted and moved around him, disturbed by a hot wind.

All around him was dark, save for deep red lines that shifted into shapes, better seen when he didn’t look directly at them.

He could feel the eyes upon him, and the pulse and beat of the Aether, coursing through his veins like heat.

“Is this your gift, little Laufeyson?” they asked.

Loki tried to rise. Tried to push himself up to stand on his own feet so he was not splayed in subservience. But his body felt heavy. So heavy...heavy with power. Even holding up his head was an effort.

“Will you take it?” he asked, and heard his own voice echo with a violent red undercurrent. “The Aether. It’s yours.”

Twittering laughter spun around his head. He could see it, darting between the threads of all things, shifting as fluid as a flock of birds.

“What need...”

“...have we...”

“...for the Aether?”

“Our power...”

“...already spans...”

“...the fates of all.”

“We would gain nothing from this.”

“Then you require something greater,” Loki’s voice rumbled. He clenched his hand into the ash, his fingers digging long trenches. “That is what you want.”

“Do you presume...”

“...to know...”

“...what we want?”

Loki’s insides burned. He felt the Aether flare bright: fire in his veins, adrenaline in his heart, lightning splintering behind his eyes when he closed them. He ground his teeth until he heard the distant rumble of thunder. Felt the ground quake.

Children ran by him in the dark. Laughing. Playing.

“I know what power is greater than yours,” he hissed. “The power to shape the fates of all things.”

He snapped his eyes open and glared up to them, unafraid of the twisted, bestial visages that looked down their skeletal beaks. He looked back, his resolve rising. A mountain in his heart.

“I will possess it, and you will give me what I want or I will tear it from your fleshless hands!”

They vanished, their laughter the sound of an entire world cracking.

Loki woke in the grips of a violent coughing fit, and the sound of the ship’s proximity alerts, warning that they had reached their destination and were approaching Asgard.

*****

The healing stones were not working.

Loki frowned as he crushed a third one into a cup of water, and drank it deep. His eyes shut and he clamped down on the urge to gag at the bitter taste; the tingle of magic working its way inside him and tickling the back of his throat. He had used several already. His wrist remained shattered. His side wound still reopened and seeped blood. He still bent double with coughing fits when he breathed too deeply, spitting black flecks into the palm of his hand.

Though never when anyone else was around.

Loki steeled himself and drank down the mixture anyway. The water, at least, would do him good.

To one side, the Avengers were having a meeting.

Such as it was.

“...never seen that kind of power...”

“...couldn’t read him...”

“...took it, just like that...”

“...leveled the building...the planet...”

“...all those people...”

“...I am Groot...”

It seemed to Loki the attempted encounter with Thanos had not gone well.

It had not gone well at all.

The Avengers had managed to return to Asgard under their own power – and with the help of some eccentrics they encountered in space who possessed their own ship...two warriors, a pilot, a raccoon, and a talking tree – which was for the best. Another circle cast to retrieve them would have been Loki’s end, he was quite sure.

By their report, Thanos had not been defeated. Far from it.

And he had gotten away with the power stone.

Loki did not inquire as to the state of Xandar when they’d left it. He could make a sound assumption.

They gathered around a table now, looking over maps and glittering image projections while they decided what their next course of action would be.

Loki largely ignored it, focusing instead on his persistant wounds. He eavesdropped only enough to keep abreast of their so-called planning.

Mostly it was a lot of arguing and insults tossed back and forth.

“I’m tellin’ you, baby,” the raccoon spoke. “I’ve never seen anyone handle a gun the way you do.”

“Charmed,” Romanov intoned without looking up.

“I just rigged together a new A-26 ion cannon. Quadruple barrels. Auto and semi-auto firing with a ventilated cooling system. She’s a beauty!”

“I’ll be sure to leave the two of you alone together.”

“Or you could join me for some private target practice. Whuddya say?”

Romanov glanced up.

“Depends. Are you volunteering to be the target?”

The raccoon grinned. It licked a paw and smoothed back its whiskers.

“For you, baby, I could be.”

“You know, back where I’m from, we have hats that look like you...”

“Now I’m not saying it was not all one hundred and twelve percent my fault,” said one of the humans. The pilot. “But aren’t we laying the blame a little thick here?”

“Did you get nabbed from Earth before Indiana Jones came out?” Warmachine exasperated. “If something is on a pedestal and looks important, you don’t touch it. You just _don’t_ , man.”

“Then I’d never get paid.” The human scrunched his unshaven features. “And I totally saw Indiana Jones...”

Sif, the red witch, and the green-skinned warrior stood back with their arms folded, collective eyebrows dubiously raised.

The Captain let his head hang between his hands where they braced against the table. The human with the wings stood beside him, one reassuring hand on his shoulder.

Vision was engrossed in conversation with the tattooed one and the tree.

Volstagg was having a snack, doing his best to wipe crumbs off the table without anyone noticing.

“We still have one weapon we may use against him,” Thor proposed at length, quieting the raised voices in the room with his own.

He turned to Loki, seated back and out of the way near the wall.

“What became of the Aether, father?”

For a moment, Loki did not answer. He only met Thor’s eyes across the space between them.

“We delivered it to the Collector’s care,” Sif spoke when he did not. “For safe keeping.”

“That whack job?” The raccoon laughed. “He couldn’t keep ice cubes safe on Hoth.”

“Yeah, we kinda saw what happened with the other gem he had,” winced the pilot.

“If it is in his possession, Thanos will know,” said Thor, looking slowly to the eyes of the others gathered around the table. “But if we get to it first—”

“It has already been relinquished from his care,” Loki interrupted, speaking easily. “I’ve already seen to it.”

Thor returned a hard look to him, tightening his jaw.

“You went on your own?”

“An agent of mine,” Loki nodded. “But perfectly capable, I assure you.”

“Where is it now?”

“Safe.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere it will not be found.”

“That was said of the Aether before, father. Safe is no longer such a concrete notion.”

Loki met his eyes, matching Thor’s glare.

The room grew heavy in the sudden quiet.

“Uh, hey, big guy.” The raccoon tugged at Volstagg’s pantleg. “You wanna show me where they keep the chow around here?”

“Oh. Yes. Quite,” Volstagg said eagerly, nodding his head to the others. “Perhaps we could all do with a meal and a rest?”

“Yes,” Thor growled, though he did not take his eyes from Loki. “Sif, show them to where they may stay. We need to regather our strength.”

“Oh, please stay,” Loki drawled, a quirk of his grin slipping through. “Your ideas are so very entertaining.”

Thor’s hands tightened into fists.

“Aaaaaaaaaaand that’s our cue,” said the pilot, promptly hooking his arm through Sif’s and heading for the door. “How about the grand tour, huh?”

The others filed out, save for the Vision, who lingered.

“Leave us,” growled Thor.

Vision looked to Loki.

Loki nodded, waving his hand.

Thor barely waited until they were alone.

“Where is the Aether,” he said. A demand. Not an inquiry.

“Safe,” Loki repeated.

Thor took a step closer to him.

“We are not having this argument again.”

“Which argument would that be?” Loki wrinkled his nose, feigning a headache at his temple. “We’ve had so many of late they’re becoming a blur.”

“About you and your secrets.”

Loki flashed him a sharp look beneath the shadow of his hand.

“I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that if I keep something secret, that it’s not without reason?”

“It has occurred to me, and I have disregarded it.” Thor moved a little closer. Challenging his gaze. “I would know what you are hiding.”

Loki laughed a little.

“Everything? Then you had best sit and make yourself comfortable. It will take some time.”

Thor grabbed his arm and yanked Loki to his feet. The movement jarred enough to send a jolt of pain through his wrist and up to his shoulder. Loki grit his teeth and winced, stifling his cry into a muffled grunt.

“Where have you hidden the Aether?” Thor growled, holding him close.

Loki met his eyes, unafraid.

“And what would you do if I told you?”

“I would protect it myself.”

Loki snorted.

“And so the mighty Thor can do better than what all of Asgard and the Avengers’ powers combined could not? That is reassuring to know.”

“I see few other options.”

“Really? I see many.”

Thor gripped his arm tighter where he held it, resisting the urge to shake him.

“I will not ask you again...”

“The Aether is buried, back where it belongs,” Loki snapped. “No one will ever find it.”

“Jane found it.”

“Because of the convergence. We’re not due for another for five thousand years.”

“The Nova Prime forces on Xandar were certain they had hidden away the power stone as well. Father, you _know_ the futility of it.”

“Thanos already possesses three stones. If we had kept the Aether here, he would have four. What would you have me do?”

“Do not hide it. Use it. Give us the Aether. We may turn it against Thanos.”

“Oh ho! And now Thor’s true intentions come to light!” Loki leaned into his hold, rather than try to pull away. It removed some of the pressure on his arm.

His eyes narrowed as he sneered.

“Would not that power consume you?”

Thor stalled quite suddenly, looking at him. A good deal of his energy drained, even the clench of his hand around Loki’s arm losing some of its grip. The blink in his startled eyes settled quickly, and turned softer. Though his resolve lingered, unchanged.

“We are more desperate now than we were before.”

“And so you would weild the Aether’s power and become a villain, just as the one you’re claiming to fight.” Loki shook his head. Thor’s grip became lax, and he slipped his arm away with minimal resistance. “I think your plan is flawed, my son. Perhaps that is something to which a wretch like Loki would aspire, but not you.”

“Perhaps.”

Thor let him go with something like the sound of defeat. Loki reeled away in disgust and turned his back, returning to his drink of water with its crushed healing stones. He snatched it up and downed the rest of its contents, an insufficient distraction for how poorly defeat looked and sounded when placed upon Thor’s person.

For a moment, quiet reigned once more.

Then Thor spoke, his face turned away.

“Father, do you remember what I told you before Malekith attacked,” he rumbled, low and even. “About Jane?”

Loki made a scoffing sound. Even her _name_ aggravated him.

“Of course,” he lied, keeping his back turned. He recalled no such conversation, but that was before he had taken Odin’s place on the throne. He had danced his way around delicate scenarios such as these before.

Thor made a sound. It was rather like a sigh.

“Then you will not be surprised when I answer your accusations now, about Loki. About my vision and the dreams that have haunted me.”

“What?” Loki turned to look at him, brow knotting in a moment’s true and genuine confusion.

Thor was there to meet his eyes.

“The answer is yes,” he said, without the slightest show of hesitation or uncertainty. Thor stood at his proper posture, hands still closed at his sides, though his anger had fled.

Now, there was only conviction.

“Yes, if Loki were still alive, I would seek him out. I would indulge these desires I’ve come to know, whether they be wrong or right in your eyes. I know them only to be a part of myself, and therefore true.” He took a breath. “If...it was what Loki wanted, though I could only think he would do the same. He only ever acted in accordance with his nature.”

Loki stared, for a moment speechless.

He held his breath, waiting for Thor to waver. Waiting for him to reveal the boundaries of his own test, to gauge a presumed-Odin’s reaction.

It was a test, surely...?

When Thor did not yield, Loki cleared his throat, and strove to recover.

“How fortunate, then, that he is dead.”

His voice was a rasping whisper. Unconvincing even to his own ears.

Thor sighed, and stepped in, closing the distance between them.

“Enough,” he said. A light shake of his head made locks of hair worked loose from his plaits fall forward over his eyes. “No more of this.”

Thor reached out. He cupped Loki’s face, pressed his fingers softly into Loki’s cheek, just enough for Loki to feel. To be unable to pull away.

Then Thor kissed him.

Loki froze, all of him seizing abruptly still, as sensation jolted all at once through the exhausted and overwrought nerves of his system, then just as quickly went out.

“No more...”

Thor breathed, the tingling warmth of it hovering against Loki’s lips even as they parted. Thor left one hand at his cheek and he drew back, just enough to look into his eyes.

And Thor looked at him.

Looked at _him_.

“...Loki.”


	4. Cry As We're Torn Asunder

Loki was still. His heart had ceased to beat.

His thoughts seized as a thousand and one scenarios all clamored at once, falling over themselves to reach the forefront of his mind. He thought of a dozen times Thor had seen through his illusions – perhaps most recently when he was locked in that cell...when he’d sunk to his lowest – and how it seemed to come so easily to Thor.

Thor who knew him.

Yet still – _still_ – the greater part of Loki refused to concede the possibility. He had carried himself so flawlessly these past months. He’d calculated and measured every action with painstaking care, all his focus dedicated to not being discovered. 

He’d been so _careful_.

How could Thor know? How could he possibly have _known?_

“Loki.”

Thor spoke his name again. Lower. With greater sobriety. The weight of it dragged down the hurtling pace of Loki’s panicked mind until it slowed back to something closer to normal. Thor’s hand on his cheek pressed briefly tighter, fingers curling along the side of Loki’s neck.

Loki sighed, letting out the breath he’d been holding.

He let his eyes fall closed, and surrendered.

Just as he had in the cell.

The illusion of Odin flickered and went out, revealing himself. Clothed, yet with a sense of naked exposure that made Loki’s insides tug with the urge to curl up. To guard and protect where he was softest. Shield where he was vulnerable.

“Thor.”

He slit his eyes open just enough to see him, the level of his voice matching Thor’s tone, though his was a cold and distant regard.

Thor’s mouth parted as his breath staggered. The beginnings of a smile tugged at him. A light reached into his eyes and he moved his hand, weaving it further back into the catch of Loki’s tangled, unkept hair.

“Loki,” he whispered again, exhausted relief. Barely contained joy. So carefully spoken, as if the slightest force applied would shatter the illusion once more, and make Loki disappear.

“Loki...”

“Thor,” said Loki, taking another carefully measured breath. “I can explai—”

Thor drew back and punched him.

He struck the side of Loki’s jaw, rather than in his gut or stomach where he was already wounded. (Loki did not think he quite deserved it, regardless.) Thor grabbed his shoulders immediately to straighten him again, this time to pull him into a hug, arms wrapped about his shoulders and squeezing tight with no less vehemence than he held for the blow.

“Loki... _Loki!_ ”

“Let go of me!” Loki gasped, still reeling. He scrambled backwards against Thor’s arms and pushed at his chest until Thor eased his hold. He did not let him go far, keeping a tight grip on Loki’s shoulders, bracing him at arm’s length.

“I’m sorry! I am sorry...!” Thor’s eyes roved in a look of lost wonder, as if it had been centuries since Thor had last seen him.

Loki rolled his eyes away in disgust.

“...how?” Thor stammered at last, fighting the jumble of words that made his tongue sound thick and slow. So many questions he wanted to ask. Where to even begin? “Why? Loki...is it...?”

“Yes. It’s me.” Loki smacked Thor’s hand away when it reached for his face, seeking to touch him again. Needing the confirmation of physical reassurance. But Loki did not feel like being pawed at. “Amusing as it would be to lead you to believe you just kissed your own father.” Loki licked his lips, still able to feel the tingle of where Thor had pressed. The taste of him inside, mixed with the faintest bit of blood. “And with your tongue, too.”

“But...how...?”

Loki rubbed his jaw.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters! How did you...?” Thor’s eyes hardened, expression at last falling away from that boyish relief and gratitude that bordered so close to tearful. His hand tightened on Loki’s arm. “Where is father?”

There, Loki grinned. The slow split of his own mouth over his teeth felt good. A small thing, but it was the most lovely sensation he could remember experiencing in the last several days. Satisfying on a deeply visceral level.

A simple gesture. One he’d denied himself under the pretense of pretending to be someone else. Something uniquely _him._

Oh, he could lie... He could make up such stories about Odin’s current state and what had happened between them. He could play Thor like a puppet. Make him rage. Make him weep. Make him believe he was as true a villain as everyone thought.

It was so very tempting.

“What would you do if I said he was dead?” He eyed Thor sidelong, arching one thin dark brow. “That I killed him and assumed his place?”

Thor’s manner had hardened. He nodded his head. Once.

He said: “I would not believe you.”

Loki laughed.

“Oh, Thor. You think far too well of me.”

“I do.” Thor did not deny it, readily agreeing as he nodded his head. “I think worlds of you. I do not think you would kill him, even given the chance.” Thor paused for a moment, watching Loki twitch. “Or if you did, you would not be able.”

Loki’s smirk and laughter died. Decayed into a scowl.

“Such faith,” he sneered, and shook his head. Waved one hand dismissively. “Well, you needn’t worry. He’s not dead. He’s with mother.”

Thor frowned. Briefly alarmed, then confused.

“He’s departed from this world to another.” Loki spoke slowly as he explained, as if to a child. “You saw how he was after the convergence. He was ailing. He was sick. I convinced him to take a leave of rest and leave Asgard to me.”

“To you?” Thor frowned some more. His hands still had not released Loki’s shoulders. His fingers kneaded tighter, then eased. Infuriatingly repetitious patterns that Loki could feel.

More reassurance.

“We made an arrangement,” Loki hissed. “If nothing else, the dark elves’ attack on Asgard at least helped Odin realize he was weak.”

“But why?”

“Because _I_ am not weak, and I knew what was coming.”

“Then you did know.”

Thor breathed. He gaze turned suddenly about them in the meeting hall. It seemed very big and very quiet with only the two of them.

He looked to the table covered in maps.

“Then...all this...”

“A means to an end.” Loki sighed. He let the tension ease from him the tiniest amount. “I’ve been preparing Asgard to stand against Thanos since Svartalfheim.”

Thor returned his look to him. It was a strange look. Hesitant. Apprehensive. Gauging whether or not he was telling the truth.

His hands tightened around Loki’s shoulders.

Thor’s voice all but broke over the question he truly meant to ask.

“Why did you not tell me?”

Loki tilted up his chin, meeting his eyes in defiance.

“What would you have done if I did?”

For that, Thor had no answer. Loki enjoyed the way his gaze dodged away, guiltily down to the floor, then to one side.

“You discover I am still alive,” Loki narrated for him. “You are truly terrible at keeping secrets, brother. Your friends notice a difference in you. Soon they discover the same. Then all of Asgard knows, and most likely your Avenger friends too. Tell me...how thoroughly would that knowledge be welcomed by them? That their favorite enemy and traitor now sat on the throne?”

Thor swallowed whatever words he meant to say. Loki watched the line of his throat shift in the light as his muscles worked.

“And Thanos had to believe you were dead,” he murmured at length, nodding his understanding. “For your plans to work. To protect Asgard.”

“It certainly helped, yes.”

“Who else knows?”

“Only you.” Loki shrugged. “Well, and your Vision friend.”

Thor blinked at that.

Loki laughed again, low and breathy.

“Should you not be more surprised? Your dearly outcast brother whom you thought dead sits instead in your father’s place, protecting you all along from an enemy you only lately realized was even there. The construct whom you had a hand in helping create is capable of keeping secrets from you, and those dreams that have haunted you in the night...” Loki’s grin returned as Thor looked to him. Shameless. “Does it not simply make you want to _hit_ something?”

“Yes,” Thor growled. “You.”

He took a breath.

Held it.

“But your plan was not foolproof.”

“What do you mean?” Loki tilted his head, still smiling. Humoring him.

“You did not account for my knowing.”

“Your knowing what?”

“That you were alive.”

Loki faltered there. His smirk began to fade.

“Of course not,” he scoffed, quick to recover. “How could you?”

Thor tipped his head, lowering his eyes once more. He nodded once, as if to himself.

“I had my suspicions all along.”

Loki stopped. Even flatter.

“...what.”

Thor at last eased his hold. He let go. Stepped away from him. Loki had not noticed the warmth of his presence until cooler air filled in the space between them where he had been, all the more jarring for its change.

“I thought you dead once already,” Thor spoke in quiet confession. “I would have truly been a fool to think you would allow yourself to be killed so easily again.”

Loki felt his scalp bristle with heat under his hair. His fingers curled into fists at his sides.

“Then why not speak sooner?” he growled between clenched teeth. “Why not challenge me? _Thor_.”

“Because.” Thor glanced to his eyes. “I could only think that...”

He looked down again. Loki watched him. 

“I thought it is what you would have wanted.”

Loki felt the bones of his jaw creak with how tightly he ground his teeth together, hiding none of the murderous rage that welled to the surface then as he glared venom-laced daggers at his supposed brother. All at once he was reminded of why he hated him.

And why he’d fallen in love with him.

“I suspected,” Thor went on, undaunted before Loki’s burning glare, “but I was not certain. If it was a trick, then I believed – I _trusted_ – that what you did, you did with good reason.”

“How did you find out?” Loki hissed.

“There was no conversation about Jane before Malekith attacked,” Thor said. He bowed his head as he admitted it. “I lied.”

“You—” Loki’s jaw dropped open, but words choked on themselves. Heat moved from the top of his head into his cheeks and neck, wafting off his shoulders.

He could scarcely believe it.

Thor had tricked him.

Again.

And Thor knew it, the barest light of mischief coming to his eyes. His mouth tightened in admittance of a repressed smile.

“I learned it from you,” he said in his own defense.

Then it was Loki who lunged forward, his hands closing around Thor’s neck.

“You—!” he snarled.

Thor caught his wrists easily and turned, diverting their momentum to slam Loki’s back against the table, dislodging a few maps and markers from their place. They rolled and dropped to the floor.

Loki yelped, his strength abated as the jab to his side and wrist sent pain lancing through his body.

Thor immediately let go. His breath hitched as his eyes darted down, realizing what he’d done. He pulled his hands back.

“You’re not healing,” he said, looking to Loki in alarm.

Loki doubled in half, unable to answer as he was overtaken in a sudden and violent coughing fit. He turned away and covered his mouth with one hand, for what little good it did.

When he drew it away, his palm had grown slick with red.

“...can’t let...” Loki coughed once more, and wiped his mouth. “...the healers...get too close...they would have seen…”

“I’ll get you a healing stone.” Thor turned to leave.

Loki grabbed at his cloak to stop him. He held on with a firmly clawed fist, and shook his head.

“...only be a waste…”

Thor remained, hovering near as Loki eased himself back against the table’s edge, leaning against it for support. He caught his breath as the coughing fit passed. His side throbbed with the open wound and pain lanced through his wrist, still splinted against his chest.

He turned his head aside to spit a bit of black mixed in with the blood.

Thor whispered once it had grown quiet again.

“What is it?”

Loki laughed, wheezing.

“Part of my arrangement with Odin.” He gestured with his bloodstained hand. “His one condition: a way to make certain I don’t become power-mad and simply run Asgard into the ground.” He rested easier once his weight was braced. The pain ebbed.

He breathed.

“If Asgard falls, so do I.”

Thor’s look of horrified shock was to be expected. Loki only laughed a little, and shook his head.

“Odin is nowhere near as trusting as you are, brother.”

“Then...the destruction outside?”

“Halfway there, yes.”

“Oh, Loki...”

Thor moved in to embrace him. Loki smacked him away. The pressure would have only aggravated his wounds further.

“Stop your fretting!” he snapped. “Asgard still stands! I’m well enough.”

“At least let me change your dressings?”

Loki turned his eyes in exasperation towards the ceiling.

“If that will please you.”

Thor disappeared briefly to fetch supplies. Loki remained where he was, resting, wary and prepared to take up his disguise in an instant should any unwelcome eyes come prying.

Perhaps at this point it would simply be easier to kill anyone who stumbled haphazardly onto his secret, and blame it on the war.

The sound of a raven’s wings and scratching claws landed on the stone windowsill of the room’s outward facing wall. Loki glared at it without lifting his head as Muninn watched him, cocked her head, then flew away.

When Thor returned, he closed the door securely behind him, sealing its latch. Then Loki stripped to his waist – carefully – and sat against the table as Thor washed his wounds in a basin of clean water, applied a poultice, then fresh bandage wraps.

He adjusted Loki’s splint so it held more snugly as well.

For the longest time, neither of them spoke.

Often Thor’s eyes would lift, seeking Loki’s above him. For the briefest of moments they would meet, then Loki would dart his gaze away, caught. Pretending he wasn’t watching.

Thor frowned at the lean state of him. The sunken hollows of his ribs. The pale and malnourished pallor in his skin.

At the same time, he tried not to overly touch, aware of what contact between them now meant.

“You’ve not been taking care of yourself,” he murmured, tying off the last of the wrapping.

“I’ve been distracted,” grumbled Loki.

“We should tell the others you are alive.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“They need to know all they can about Thanos. The true threat he represents.”

“Gamora can tell you everything,” Loki sneered, waving his hand again in angry dismissal. “She should have an intimate perspective.”

“Then you will help us stop him?” Thor looked up to him.

Loki made a scoffing sound through his nose.

“Do you believe for an instant your little band of friends would allow it?”

“At this point we cannot refuse any help.” Thor nodded. “And I will speak on your behalf.”

Loki scoffed again.

“My behalf...”

“You’ve carried all these burdens alone.” Thor’s voice was soft. Almost reverent. “You would have continued to do so if I hadn’t—”

“There was little choice in the matter, wasn’t there?” Loki huffed. “You had your friends and your Avenging. You did not need me.” He sneered just a little. “And I did not need you.”

Thor lowered his gaze. He looked back to his hands, and his task.

“No. You did not.” He wrung out the cloth he’d used to clean and wipe over Loki’s skin, his touches infinitely tender and careful. He hung it over the side of the basin once he’d finished. “What do we do now?”

“Now?” Loki gestured. “Now, we make every effort we can to prevent Thanos from gathering the rest of the infinity stones and thus giving the death-obsessed madman power over every possible cosmos. It’s quite obvious, really.”

“No, Loki.”

The tone of Thor’s voice drew Loki’s eyes, and he glanced down to him, meeting again.

Loki immediately wished he hadn’t.

“What I mean to say is, what do we do now?”

“What?” Loki feigned ingorance, falling back on reliable distraction. “Well, I imagine I will first put my clothing back on, and then—”

“ _Loki._ ”

Loki fell quiet.

Thor closed his eyes, and shook his head. He drew a slow, steady breath to clear a path for his words.

Loki braced himself to hear them.

“You did not have to pretend to come to me in dreams.”

Briefly, Loki’s expression fell soft. Then he ventured a failed attempt at a smirk.

“And how could I resist? Preying upon your guilt. An excuse to carry out such dark indulgences and let you believe you were solely responsible?” His grin sharpened a little more as he drew his tongue across his teeth. “Such dark, dirty little things.”

Thor locked his glare upon him. He set his hands over his knees where he had pushed a chair near the table that he could sit while he saw to Loki’s wounds. Though Loki was above him, their eyes met on even ground.

“I meant what I said about you,” said Thor. “Every word.”

“Spoken only after you realized the truth. That you were not speaking to your father at all.” Loki sneered. “Forgive me if I hold some reservations.”

Thor stood.

He touched Loki’s thigh.

He leaned in close to him. Close enough that his breath fell on Loki’s lips.

“Then let me dispel them.”

And Loki leaned back, maintaining their distance.

“How?” he challenged, tipping up his chin so that, even now, like this, he could look down the sharp slant of his nose.

Thor’s mouth crooked up into a lopsided smile. Confident. Uneven. As easy and natural as when they were young, and he would smile in that exact way just before he was about to do something foolish.

“Like this...”

He leaned in.

Loki raised one hand to press over Thor’s mouth, succinctly halting his advance.

“Not here,” he growled. “Someone could see...”

Thor kissed his fingertips.

“Then let them see.”

“No! You idiot...!”

Thor captured Loki’s hand and moved it away, holding it aside and trapped in a firm grip as he closed the rest of the distance between them. One arm caught Loki and held him about the waist, bracing his weight, clamping down as Loki wriggled in an attempt to get away. (Though he did not struggle overly much...for a multitude reasons.) Loki sputtered his protests and Thor ignored them as he caught Loki’s mouth with the focused intent of a trap. One designed to not let go.

Loki’s eyes were wide and his voice muffled as he pushed against Thor’s chest with his remaining good hand. He thumped half-heartedly against his shoulder and curled his fingers into the lining of Thor’s tunic.

Then his struggles grew less.

And less.

Loki’s eyes drifted luxuriously closed and he moaned, resistance melting away altogether. His hand traded clawing at Thor’s tunic for running up into his hair instead, curling around him and pulling him in as he eased. Opened in mind and body.

It was a good kiss. Not the rushed, impulsive uncertainty of the first one, where Thor still may have harbored some doubt as to what he was doing. No, in this, was he sure. He breathed in deeply through his nose to make it prolonged, parted his lips and coaxed Loki’s to do the same with a brush of his tongue, teeth biting down with infinite gentleness on Loki’s bottom lip.

Loki whimpered, relying on Thor to hold his weight as he leaned back onto the table. Drew Thor in to fill the space above him. The muscles in his body quaked, trembled, and the shiver as Thor traced a hand down his sensitive side did nothing to help.

A moan sounded as a rumble deep in Thor’s chest. He stepped up to the table, pushing Loki’s thighs aside to move in between them, to make them that much closer and more entwined as his hand moved to the small of Loki’s back, bracing support. Offering his strength without thought.

And Loki relaxed into his hold. Trusting.

Loki felt his good hand rove as if on its own, touching, then tangling into the fall of Thor’s hair, brushing over his lips between their kiss and the rough scratch of his beard.

Thor’s moan echoed one in himself, the lines of Loki’s brow growing deeper as he ignored physical discomfort in favor of tasting him again.

When they did at last part, gasping for breath, Loki licked his lips. His eyes slitted open only the barest amount to see Thor through an unfocused haze.

“You would do this,” he breathed, his hand braced on Thor’s chest, just over his collar. His words came thin and labored. “After all I’ve done…”

“Yes,” said Thor. No hesitation. No doubt. “Yes...”

“You have absolutely no reason to trust me.”

“No. But I choose to.”

“Idiot.” Loki clawed his fingers back through Thor’s hair. Touched their lips together. Savored the anticipation of another kiss. “I will stab out your eyes and leave you for Thanos’ dogs to devour…”

Thor smiled, and tilted down his head. He laughed a little as their brows touched, hair and breath mingling between them in increasingly wet, stifling heat.

“Liar,” he whispered, and kissed him again.

Loki grabbed a fistful of the front of Thor’s tunic, pulling him down on top of him as Thor leaned him the rest of the way backwards. He hissed at the pain jarred through his side and shattered wrist as his back came to rest upon the table, but didn’t stop. He tugged insistantly at the cloth around Thor’s neck when he felt him pause. Urging him to go on.

How long had it been since Thor’s last ‘dream?’

Too long. Far too long.

Loki arched his back sharply, groaning through his teeth, body clenched in a war of divine agony and exquisite bliss as Thor abandoned his mouth to seek lower, nuzzling beard and scruff against his neck, trailing a line down his chest with his lips. Hot breath passed over Loki’s flushed and aroused nipples and over the furious beat of his heart.

Thor paused only when he came to Loki’s wounded side, swathed in clean white bandages.

He looked up under his dark brow, seeking Loki’s permission before he kissed there, too. Where he was tender.

Loki’s toes curled inside his boots and heat shot through his blood, pooling in the apex of his thighs where his groin had taken up a similar throbbing pulse. Like the beat of a second heart.

“Thor,” Loki whimpered, the composure and control he exerted so dominantly in their dream sessions nowhere to be found. Truth had robbed him of it. “Please...”

Thor rose back to the level of his eyes. He leaned over him, powerful and close and hot and hard, and had just begun to undo the clasps of his belt when Vision walked through the wall.

“...I’m sorry,” he said, perfectly conversational. “I do hope I’m not interrupting?”

Thor and Loki froze as one and both turned their eyes towards him. One blinked in surprise. The other glared a promise of murder.

Vision looked back at them, lightly tilting his head.

“Choose your next words very, very carefully,” said Loki, leaving his fingers hooked in the lining of Thor’s pants. He had no intention of moving them without sufficient reason.

Vision nodded his head, leaving it bowed, tipped forward as if in apology.

“I’m afraid we have just received word from the Starlord’s pirate friends,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Thor.

“They are relaying news from Nova Prime,” said Vision. “Thanos has been found. And he has captured the soul and time gems.”

*****

Reintroducing Loki to the Avengers went about as well as Loki expected.

Which was to say not at all.

To their credit, the Captain and Black Widow didn’t immediately draw their weapons upon seeing Loki walk in at Thor’s side, but their body language spoke an immediate tension and alarm.

They readied their stance, and looked to Thor for an explanation.

Sif, on the other hand, did draw her weapon.

“You,” she growled.

“Hello again, Sif,” Loki smiled.

“Thor,” said the Captain warily, not taking his eyes from him. “What is this?”

“I can explain,” said Thor, “though it may take some time, of which we have precious little.”

“It won’t take that long to explain,” said the green-skinned warrior as she slid up through their ranks, eying Loki with no less amount of wariness.

Loki tilted his head towards her.

“Gamora. You’re looking lovely as ever.”

“You two know each other?” asked the Widow.

“Now who’s this guy?” said the raccoon around a mouthful of bread, spitting crumbs. “Ronan’s prettier sister?”

“He was an agent for my father.” Gamora nodded and circled Loki as a vulture might eye a potential meal. Loki stood his ground, keeping his eyes ahead. “I saw them meet together several times. He was given the scepter with the mind stone...”

“Yeah,” said the Captain. “We remember that part.”

“He was sent to Earth to retrieve the Tesseract.” Gamora narrowed her eyes. “And enslave the planet.”

“Those plans seem to have changed,” said Loki, offering a wry smile toward them all. Toward Gamora in particular. “So sorry.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Bared a flash of teeth.

“I knew you would not succeed.”

“Did you now?”

“You’re no warrior.”

“We know what you are,” muttered Sif. “Why are you here and not in Hel where you belong?”

“Have I really done so much to deserve your ire?” Loki flashed a brief show of irritation at her.

“Yes,” several of them answered at once.

“Ask the humans of Midgard whose homes were burned by the Destroyer,” said Sif.

Loki sneered.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy the battle.”

“Ask Agent Coulson,” said the Captain.

“Oh. Is he dead after all? It’s so hard to keep track.”

“Ask Queen Frigga.”

Sif spoke the words, but the effect they carried landed like a physical blow. Loki’s smirking sarcasm at once fell away, replaced by a deadly grave severity.

He met her eyes with a glare made of lead, though he did not speak.

He had no answer for her.

“What are you scheming now?” demanded Gamora.

“Loki has been protecting Asgard all this while,” spoke Thor, unmoved from where he stood between Loki and the others, acting his part as a barrier. “Up until this most recent attack.”

“Why?” asked the Widow.

“Even if I answered,” Loki muttered wretchedly. “Would you believe me?”

“Not a word.”

“Wanda?” the Captain prompted.

The red witch moved closer. Loki met her eyes as she squinted with concentration, and he could feel the prod of her power against his senses. He clamped down tightly on his own thoughts, standing his ground without fear.

“My head is not a place you want to see,” he said in warning. “Believe me, girl.”

“I’ve seen worse,” she challenged.

“No. You haven’t.”

She pressed a moment longer, harder. Seeking deeper.

Then she relented. Sighed and shook her head.

“I can’t read him,” she reported back to the Captain. “But there is no hex on Thor. He speaks his own mind.”

“Frequently,” muttered Loki.

“You really think we can trust him, Thor?” the Captain asked.

“To do what is necessary,” Thor nodded. “Yes. And I will keep watch over him.” There he pinned Loki with a look. “A very close watch.”

“You are not seriously suggesting we bring Loki along?” said the Widow. “Or let him get within the same star system as the infinity gems?”

“And who among you has the most experience in how to wield them?” Loki sneered. “Who among you understands magic as it was used in their creation?”

Quiet reigned as several of the Avengers and their allies looked to each other. The only sound was that of the raccoon continuing to eat. Then a burp.

Loki shrugged as their condemning glares returned to him.

“If I was still in league with Thanos,” he said, “I would have opened the gates to Asgard for him a long time ago, and he would already have all the gems.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t playing at something bigger.” Romanov continued to challenge. “Or that you don’t want the gems for yourself.”

“Bigger than Thanos? That is truly ambitious.” Loki took a deliberate step closer to her. Just to see her shift her weight. Prepare to strike. “Well, if I make the slightest step out of line, where better to have me than right under your nose, where you can put me down?”

“Don’t doubt for an instant I will.”

“Give us one reason why we shouldn’t put you down right now,” growled the Captain.

“Revenge, Captain? Not very American.”

“I will not let you,” said Thor, moving to his side. He put one hand on Loki’s arm. “I will bear responsibility for all his actions.”

“Comforting as that is, Thor, I think we need something else.”

“What else is there?”

Sif stood with her spear poised, awaiting the slightest excuse. Romanov’s hand lingered near her gun. Loki could feel the tension in the air – tangible, ready to snap, Thor ready to leap to his defense – until another voice spoke, and dispelled it.

“I believe we should bring him with us,” said the Vision, speaking with a confidence that led and did not offend. “His skills may be useful, and he does have inner knowledge of Thanos’ plans.”

The tension in the air shifted. All looked to the Captain.

Who glanced aside to him.

“You’re sure?” he asked. 

The Vision nodded.

The Captain sighed.

“Alright. Alright. We could use all the help we can get. Thor, watch him, and – Loki – if you so much as _think_ about crossing us—”

“Let me guess,” Loki finished for him. “You’ll kill me?”

He rolled his eyes, and turned, leading the way out and to the waiting ships.

*****

The pilot’s ship was small – Quill, the others called him...or alternately, Starlord, though it was spoken with some disdain – and only sufficient to carry a few individuals at a time. But with the help of Nova Prime’s forces sent from what was left of Xandar, and Quill’s associates of a less reputable nature who possessed a fleet of their own, they were able to fit the whole of the Avengers and the small Asgardian army that would accompany them for transport.

The Avengers divided themselves among the ships as was best strategically decided.

And, as the raccoon pointed out, so that if one of them blew up, it would not get them all.

Loki opted to travel in one of the Nova Corps’ fighters. They were far more luxurious than the pirate skiffs.

He would not let the Aether from his sight, but nor would the others allow him to carry it. They compromised in giving the Aether to Thor, and having the two of them assigned to the same transport. (An arrangement they both would have made anyway.)

“You realize that if we do this,” the Captain warned as Thor took up the small container, “we’ll be bringing the Aether right to him.”

The containment case was small. Deceptively simple. A plain black box carved from volcanic rock and covered in protective runes. Only the faintest red glow slipped through the stone, hinting at what power it carried inside.

Thor nodded his head sagely, holding the Aether close against him.

“We cannot leave it unguarded,” he said. “It may yet be useful against him.”

“Will Asgard be safe on its own?”

“No.” Thor shook his head. “But if we do not stop Thanos, nowhere will be safe.”

Inside the ship, it was quiet. The engines were a low, persistent hum in the background of otherwise silent, empty space; the vibration of the transport’s foundation a barely-there tremble beneath Loki’s fingertips as he traced them over the gleaming metal of a control console.

The Nova Corps’ ships were cleaner, too.

It was a long journey to the cosmic wastes of Thanos’ last known location, a journey only made possible by the advanced technology of the Nova Corps and Ravager fleet.

Loki was relieved to not have to create any more circles.

For the duration of the journey, communication was shared across the ships’ arrays. A good deal of it consisted entirely of mortal astonishment.

“...so you guys can just travel through space...what kind of energy we talking...?”

“...crystallic fusion...not that hard...”

“...Stark...Banner...sorry they missed this...”

“...must be new for you...”

“...nah...Buck Rogers wasn’t that far off...”

“...you read that...?”

“...liked his last name...”

A Nova Corps pilot assigned to their ship maintained its controls, leaving Thor and Loki free to rest and recover their strength.

They did little of either.

When he was not listening in on the Avengers’ strategizing, Loki worked. He crafted protection charms for the warriors. He cast constant scrying spells to remain abreast of Thanos’ actions and movements, as closely as he could follow. He looked over maps and star charts and astrogation routes and pointed out the foolishness of others when it became unbearable to his ears.

He did not make any friends.

Sometimes Vision visited them – the vacuum of space served as no obstacle to his wandering...nor did the walls of ships – and the three of them would talk. Thor, possessed of a similar restlessness, found a comfort in the focus of smaller, mundane things.

He spoke a good deal of his and Loki’s childhood in Asgard.

Vision was glad to see his despair over the discovery of Loki’s presence to be minimal.

All of them barely slept.

Sometimes, Loki would allow Thor to change the dressings on his wounds, ignoring his worries over how they appeared to be getting worse.

For a good deal of the journey, it was simply quiet.

*****

Loki stood before a wide viewscreen in the side of the ship, arms folded as he looked out at the stars.

They drifted by silently. Almost lazily. Distant and oblivious to the heavy weight that held the fleet of ships together. That characterized the sense of claustrophobia inside.

Loki did not enjoy being confined in such a small space in the presence of others for so long. A view of the stars, at least, offered an escape.

Thor watched him from the entryway in a moment’s quiet.

“You should sleep,” he murmured at length, stepping inside.

“Sleep is for the weak,” said Loki. His voice was a low mumble. Distracted. Distant. “There is too much to do.”

“You’ve done enough already.”

“No...never enough...”

Thor moved to his side.

For a moment they stood, watching the stars. The ship hummed quietly around them and their shoulders only barely touched.

For a moment, the last several years had not happened.

For a moment, they stood together under the eve of battle at one another’s side. They were equals again.

And when the moment ended, Loki sighed.

“Where did we go wrong, Thor?” he said. “How did we end up here?”

“I do not know,” Thor rumbled, with a sound of similar introspection.

Loki’s voice did not stray from its low monotone.

“Everything I did, I did for father. And for you,” he said. “I want you to know that.”

“There was no need for you to do anything. We were happy, just as we were.”

“Were we?” Loki glanced aside to him. The side of his mouth slanted upward: a jagged slash following the line of his jaw in the ship’s dim light.

Thor met his gaze, soft and sober.

“You think we wanted you to destroy Jotunheim? To attack Earth?”

“Few people realize what it is they truly need. Even fewer ask for it.”

“I did not need you to be overcome with a desire for genocide.” Thor took a breath. Steadied himself. “All I ever needed was for you to be my brother. To stand by me in all things.”

“Beside,” said Loki, “or behind?”

Thor sighed. They had argued about this before.

Loki turned his gaze back out to the stars. His wry smile lingered, soft on his lips.

“Why stand at your side when I could lift you up, exalted?” He spoke as if to himself. “And if that was not enough, then to have you kneel before me, and look up in worshipful submission?”

The red that touched Thor’s cheeks made Loki’s smile tilt into a leer. He ducked his gaze towards the floor.

“You sought to wipe out the frost giants for your own purposes,” said Thor. “Not mine.”

“Motivations may run concurrent.”

“I won’t condone anything you’ve done, Loki.” Thor shook his head.

“You did not seem to mind my actions in the dark of your chambers, as I recall.”

Thor flashed him a look. Warning, but also short-lived. Remorse killed it.

Loki exaggerated a pout.

“So ashamed of me, brother?”

Thor shook his head.

“No. Not ashamed. Only...I regret that this...this was what it took...to...”

His voice trailed away. Loki looked to him, an arch of one dark brow over his dubious gaze.

Thor closed his eyes.

“Perhaps...if we had come to each other sooner, all of this could have been avoided.”

“All of this?” Loki hissed. “All I’ve accomplished?”

“And how much have you lost?”

“If I hadn’t been privy to Thanos’ plans, all of this would have been much worse than it is now.”

“And what has been the price?”

“None to you.” Loki returned his gaze to the stars. “Not to worry, brother. When this is all over, you can return to your human. You can go back to avenging with your Earth friends. Asgard will be safe. Odin will return and demand his throne. All will be well.” He feigned a dramatic sigh, looking down to his hands. “Will that be enough to absolve wicked Loki? Only the Norns can say. Perhaps it will be back to the dungeons with him.”

Thor wrenched his expression aside as though in pain, and for a moment did not respond. Their argument could spiral in circles for all of eternity and never be resolved.

It made him think of another time when they argued: on a stolen Asgardian skiff, coasting over the black sands of Svartalfheim.

A similar nauseating twist coiled in his stomach to think about it now, just as it had back then.

“We should not be fighting,” he said, the words uttered through a great strain.

He turned his gaze aside towards one of the ship’s control consoles. In the dim light, the interior of the vessel was cast entirely in soft blue: a thing the pale light of the distant stars did nothing to dispel. Points of yellow and gold flashed upon panels – various commands for various parts of the ship – but only the Aether remained its glowing red.

It was encased in a ward of protective runes and energy upon the console, shielded from any attempts to remove it.

It glowed with the quiet promise of power. A slash of open wound among the blue.

The plan was simple: once they caught up with Thanos’ forces, they would attack. No warning. No attempts at negotiation. Their armies would collide and serve as a distraction for one another – keeping the battle away from civilian life – while key members among their ranks targeted Thanos and attempted to steal back the infinity stones.

Superior numbers was the only advantage they had against him.

Once they had the gems, they would be scattered again, and all focus could return to nullifying the threat of Thanos himself.

It did not sit well with the Captain, nor many of the others, to be the ones to attack first – let alone from ambush – but there was little choice in the matter. Surprise was the only element they could wield in their favor. They had tried once already to find another solution, and Thanos had sent them fleeing.

It was a good plan. A sensible plan. One which Loki, at least, had put up minimal argument against.

Perhaps that was what made Thor suspect there was something wrong with it.

“I do not like the idea of leaving the Aether here unguarded,” he said as the silence around them grew long.

“It will not be unguarded,” said Loki.

Thor made a pained face once more, thinking of their pilot, and the Asgardian forces.

“Thanos could easily overwhelm them, once he knows where to look.” He lowered his eyes. “Now more than ever could we use Dr. Banner’s help...”

Loki sneered.

“Then stay behind and guard it yourself. You were confident enough you could do it before.”

“No. I should be out there. Fighting.”

“I could stay with it?”

Thor shot him a look. Loki’s sneer lilted into a smirk.

“Then stop whining,” he said.

The stars continued to drift. Thor continued to fret. Loki watched him along the edge of his vision, eying him sidelong.

A word from their pilot over the ship’s internal systems let them know they would be arriving soon.

Loki smiled, humming to himself, as he noted Thor growing still again with resolve. Preparing in mind as much as in body for what he knew they would have to do.

“Any final words?” Loki prompted. “Should the worst happen?”

Thor shook his head.

“I have no intention of letting the worst happen.”

“That does not mean it will await your permission.” Loki shrugged. “I only know your penchant for sentimentality. I should hate for you to spend the rest of eternity suffering remorse for the unsaid.”

Thor looked down at his hands.

He said nothing.

“Very well,” Loki went on. “Then I shall.” He cleared his throat, hands clasping behind his back as he began, lifting his voice as though in the recitation of a speech: “I regret nothing I’ve done. Given the chance, I would do it all again. Oh, with some minor changes perhaps, to better see to my own success, but at the core of it, I still hold to—”

“I love you,” said Thor.

Loki stopped.

He looked to him in the same instant Thor lifted his gaze. His eyes, their characteristically deep, impossible blue – even moreso in this light – held nothing but the depths of sincerity to which his words had fallen. He closed his hands into fists as if to anchor them in place. Or to substitute for not reaching for Loki’s.

“I always have,” he finished, swallowing against a tightness in his throat.

For a moment, Loki stared, searching the depths of him.

Then he found a smile, a soft little half-laugh, as he feigned no effect.

Deflected. Hid.

“Eloquent, as ever,” he breathed, voice tight with control.

He swallowed, too.

“And, as always, too late.”

“Perhaps,” whispered Thor. “But even if it changes nothing, I do not believe it is a waste.”

Loki felt a burning sting near the top of his nose that crept into the corners of his eyes. A tightness in the back of his own throat made him believe another coughing fit was on its way. A breath staggered from him, ragged, as he forced another laugh.

“Oh Thor, you really—”

Thor caught his chin, and closed the space between them.

Loki’s eyes closed of their own accord. His mouth parted, a quiet gasp cut off mid-breath as Thor’s mouth landed to just the side of his.

Clumsy aim, as far as kisses went. But it did not dull Thor’s commitment to it. The rough callouses of his palm conformed to the line of Loki’s sharp cheek, and he held him, moving in closer to nuzzle in the warm wake of his breath.

Brows and noses brushed. Pressed. Eyes met very close.

“Were I given the chance,” Thor spoke against his lips, “to do it over, I would change a great many things.”

Loki moaned the softest of sighs, his teeth claiming hold of Thor’s lip a moment before allowing him to pull away.

“Thor,” he whispered – a whine, really – as want stirred to the surface of his overtired and aching body. He lifted his good hand, the back of it just brushing the tips of Thor’s hair.

Thor slipped one arm around him.

“How much longer until we’re in range?” he rumbled.

“Long enough,” Loki answered, and leaned into his hold. His hand slid down Thor’s neck to rest over his heart. Fingertips pressed in to the softer parts between his armor. “Shall we finish what we started back home?”

Thor’s breath shuddered. Staggered.

“Loki...”

Mouths crushed together. Thor’s hand pressed over his cheek.

It only made sense for Thor to seek to brace those he kissed this way – so far he’d touched Loki every time thus: one hand to his cheek, slipping to the back of his neck. Loki had seen him kiss countless others in a similar manner, and always it made him burn. Thor kissed so fully, with such dedication, that it seemed if he did not brace his partner in some way, he would bowl them over entirely.

It was delicious.

Loki closed his eyes, parting his mouth to draw Thor in. Any resistance in his person melted away beneath sweet surrender.

Thor backed him until Loki’s waist hit the control console mounted on the wall, trapping him against it with his bulk. Pressing into him with his weight. When that was no longer sufficient, he reached for Loki’s rear to grab hold and heft him up, seating him upon the console’s edge; bringing their waists together at a better level for what he had in mind.

Mouths gasped where they parted for breath, never fully abandoning their touch.

Thor’s hands traced over Loki’s leather-clad thighs, parting them around him. He guided them around his hips until they crossed at his back, ankles locking tight. Loki moaned and leaned back, held onto him with his good hand clamped around the back of Thor’s neck. Holding on. Holding himself up. Close enough to kiss and bite and taste the lines of Thor’s neck as Thor braced himself above him.

Loki bit and licked at his mouth. Traced his tongue in intricate patterns over Thor’s lips. His clawed grip on the back of Thor’s neck tightened. Eased. Caught locks of his hair as it tightened again in slow, thorough massage. Scratching deliberately into his skin.

Thor groaned, grinding one hard, needy thrust against him as heat shot through his veins. Want made his heart ache and desire sent the sound of Loki’s groan curling fire through his gut.

“Loki,” he whispered, hand cupped at Loki’s neck as he kissed his throat, pressed his lips over the furious beat of a pulse there.

Then...Thor frowned. His brow furrowed, confused, as a sluggishness crept into his thoughts. Slow to notice, it was not until Loki’s presence grew further and further away from him, when darkness feathered the edges of his vision, when his groping hands grew heavy, that he took his mouth from Loki’s skin.

“Loki...” He murmured, strove to coordinate. But the commands sent to his body no longer made sense. “What are you...doing...?”

Loki kissed him one more time.

“I am sorry, brother,” he whispered. He licked the shell of Thor’s ear and nuzzled gently, his arm working its way around Thor’s shoulders to heft him off and up.

“I am sorry, but you would only try to stop me.”

Thor’s eyes flashed wide. He looked up to Loki in astonishment...and hurt...and could do nothing to stop himself as his weight shifted. He stumbled back, to one side as the ship’s floor tipped beneath him. Loki caught him before he fell, easing Thor down to the floor, whispering quiet encouragement until he lay at rest.

Quite unconscious.

Loki brushed hair away from Thor’s face and kissed his brow, lingering only a moment longer.

“You all must remain heroes,” he spoke, imagining that, in some part, Thor could still hear him. “The worlds must see you as such. But as for myself...”

Loki made certain Thor was positioned as comfortably as possible on the floor, tucked in against the shelter of a control panel. Then he stood, turning away. He returned to the casing where the Aether was housed upon the console, and held out his hand.

Runes flickered and went out.

A gesture. A few words. Then the shielding went down as well.

Loki opened the black obsidian box, drawing out the Aether into the air, where it curled and coiled with a pulse like living blood around his hand.

He laughed a little, and shook his head, sardonic resolve in his smile.

“I am no hero.”

He made a wrenching gesture with his hand. The Aether at once split. Shattered. Red shards fell away and it coiled together, reforming into the solidified shape of a gem.

It gleamed red in the ship’s low light with the promise of dark power. A light that reflected all too keenly in Loki’s eyes.

Loki took the gem in his hand, curling his fingers slowly around it, squeezing it into his palm and unable to stifle the gasp such power sent jolting through his body.

He slipped it inside his coat, nestled close to the beat of his heart.

“When heroes fail, the best way to handle a villain, dear brother, is with another villain.”

Loki turned and stalked towards the cockpit of the ship, where he incapacitated the pilot quickly and efficiently, then took over the controls himself.

The fleet hurtled on through the darkness of space, speeding towards their target, where Thanos waited.

And Loki smiled.


	5. Unto What Gods Do We Utter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All credit to ThePhoenixandTheDragon for sparking the original idea for this.
> 
> Vision's quote (c) Ursula LeGuin, from "A Wizard of Earthsea."

“So this Thanos guy...he’s got these gems...”

“Yes.”

“And these gems, they control...everything?”

“They command all power in the known universe, yes. Each one is the embodiment of a different aspect.”

“And one of them is time?”

“Yes.”

“Sooooo...Thanos can control time?”

Loki sighed, resting his temple against the brace of one hand. Explaining things to mortals was frequently tiresome. Let alone trying to explain the finer points of magic to a rodent.

“In the simplest terms,” he muttered into the communications’ array. “Yes.”

The raccoon on the other end of the channel made a noise of thoughtfulness.

“See, I’m just trying to work this out,” said Rocket. “If a big guy like that can control time, why hasn’t he gone back already and gotten all the stones from the past before we could get to ‘em? For that matter, why hasn’t he gone back to last night and killed us all in our sleep? Huh? He’s got the space gem too, right? If I had those things, I’d’ve wiped us all out already.”

Loki rubbed wearily at his brow.

Clearly, the talking rat knew nothing about megalomaniacs.

“I think you are vastly overrating our own importance,” Loki explained with great patience. He gestured with his hand out the forward viewscreen of the ship, toward the stars. “Firstly, the gems work best when in tandem with each other. Thanos could very well use the time stone’s power, but it would not be at full effectiveness until he has collected all six. There is a possibility its workings could go wrong. Secondly, Thanos believes himself already won and our interference to be an insignificant annoyance at best. Using the gems to preemptively destroy us would be an admission of our status as a threat, which he will never do. Thirdly—”

“So the guy’s just one big, massive, walking ego. That’s what you’re telling me?”

Loki sighed.

“That is correct.”

“I am Groot,” said a voice in the background of the comm channel.

“You said it, pal.”

“There are also the theories of time travel and the mechanics of how even changing the smallest detail of the past could have unforeseen consequences to an already established future, which Thanos most certainly already knows.” Loki verbally shrugged. “But you don’t want to hear about all that.”

“Nah. You’re right. Hey Quill! Pass the chips.”

Loki closed his eyes to brace against his headache, and turned off the channel.

He supposed that was what he deserved for thinking he could find intelligent conversation among any of Thor’s new and stranger intergalactic friends.

The Vision had spoiled him.

After he’d seduced Thor and enchanted him into sleep, then dealt with the pilot, Loki slumped down into the cushioned chair behind the ship’s forward console. His eyes scanned the controls with a quick and easy competence. His takeover of the Nova Corps flier had thus far gone unnoticed. A few minor adjustments to the ship’s parameters, and he would continue on with the rest of the fleet until they reached Thanos’ stronghold, confident of his ability to impersonate either the pilot or Thor should the need arise.

They were getting close. They had entered a very familiar asteroid field.

Once the attack on Thanos’ forces began, Loki could break off from the rest and steal away in the ensuing chaos. One he was free and on his own he could—

Loki’s working of the ship’s controls stilled as a blade slid up and underneath his chin, pressing just hard enough to draw a drop of blood along the polished metal sheen.

“Stand,” ordered a stern voice over his shoulder.

Loki breathed, a smile immediately coating his face.

“Sif? Oh my...”

He set his hands in plain view upon the console, and lay them still, lest any sudden movements spur her to attack.

“How lovely to see you. Again.”

“Stand,” Sif ordered once more, pushing the blade of her sword harder against him, forcing his chin to rise and stretch his neck taut. “And face me.”

“You stowed away? Not very ladylike.”

“Be grateful I do not run you through while your back is turned,” she growled.

“Oh yes,” said Loki, nodding, though not overly much. “Thank you for that. To what do I owe my good fortune?”

“Thor still lives.” She turned her sword, the blade pricking harder over the pulse of Loki’s vein. “Honor demands you be granted that small mercy.”

“Oh, yes. Honor. Will honor forbid you from killing me if I don’t turn around?”

Sif sneered.

“My conscience can take the blow if you do not.”

“Oh, Sif,” Loki chuckled. He lifted his hands slowly into the air. Held them aloft in sign of surrender.

He leaned back in the pilot’s seat, easing some of the pressure of Sif’s sword against him.

“You know,” he said, conversational. “If you only told Thor how you felt, it would save so much energy on all this pining.”

Sif faltered. Just for a moment.

“...what...?”

A moment was all Loki needed.

He swept his arm up and under her sword to push it from his throat, in the same instant vanishing in a pulse of magic.

He reappeared behind her, dagger in hand and aiming to stab.

She blocked, of course, and spun with a kick to his chest that sent him hurtling back into the wall of the ship. The impact rang with a metallic thud and did no favors to his still-unhealed wounds.

Loki growled and swore, dropping to the floor as his body reeled.

Sif slammed her hand onto the control panel, opening a commline to the other Nova Corps vessels.

“This is Sif! Loki has taken over the ship! He’s enspelled Thor! He has the Aether! He—!”

Loki blasted her with enough magic to knock her away from the console. Voices and static sizzled over the open lines as countless responses came at once.

Loki struggled to stand and coughed black bile against his fingers as his wounds throbbed. He felt the pulse of the red gem of reality beat close to his heart, clawing against his senses and crying out to enter his veins. To consume and spread its power ever outward.

He clamped down against the urge to use it, and blasted Sif instead with more magic as she regained her feet. She swung her sword, sliced through the blasts with a coordinated control in the cramped space, and surged towards him, roaring her conviction.

She meant to kill him. And Loki knew he wouldn’t last long in a fight against her.

Through the forward viewscreen, he could see other ships of the Nova Corps fleet peel away from their formation. They turned their course to surround the ship, weapons armed and aiming with a flicker of light at their tips.

He snarled his frustration. On Sif’s next attack, he left an illusion of himself to flicker and distract the blade of her sword long enough to slip by, aiming another blast of power at the panel of the ship’s controls.

They exploded in a shower of sparks and imploding wire, and sent the ship into a downward plummet towards the nearest asteroid. A crack in the forward viewscreen created a whirlwind of pressure through the ship’s interior, enough to distract and occupy Sif as Loki braced for impact, then escaped.

*****

They didn’t find Loki’s body among the wreckage.

“Then he still lives,” growled Sif.

They found Thor – unconscious, but alive – and moved him to another ship. (It took four Nova Corps officers and Drax to move him.) The pilot was not so fortunate.

“We won’t find him,” said Gamora, scanning the dark, porous rock landscape of the asteroid. “Unless he wants to be found.”

“Then we leave him behind.” Sif nodded. “And good riddance.”

“He has the Aether.”

“If we make for Thanos, we will find him there.” Sif’s hand tightened around the grip of her sword. “Ally or no. Then we will deal with the traitor.”

“If Loki reaches Thanos first, he will have all six gems.”

“All the more reason we should hurry.”

They salvaged what supplies they needed from the wreck, and set off again in another ship, leaving Loki to his fate on the barren asteroid.

*****

The attack on Thanos happened suddenly, and brutally.

And produced mixed results.

The Avengers and their allies accomplished their main goal. Using surprise and numbers, they stole what gems Thanos had already collected back from his stronghold keep. The gems were divided quickly among their numbers, then scattered again as each holder fled in a different direction.

But a good deal of their ranks were lost in the fighting.

No one reported any sign of Loki, or the Aether.

All the more reason Thor led his charge with a furious roar: hurling bolts of lightning near-indiscriminately at their enemies; tearing vast fissures through the terrain of alien planets; and screaming Loki’s name into the void of space.

*****

Hogun, Fandral, and Volstagg were given charge of the time gem, along with strict instructions not to use it.

Volstagg held the glowing orange stone aloft in its containment vessel: a clear-sided contraption whose handle on the top made him think of a common lantern.

He squinted at the gem.

“Rather small,” he hummed. “Hardly impressive enough to be worth all this fuss.”

“Not all things impressive come in packages as large as you,” said Fandral, seated at the ship’s controls.

“Hrnn,” said Hogun.

“Now stop fiddling with it.”

“Can we not simply take the gem back to Asgard?” Volstagg set the lantern down on one of the ship’s consoles. A locking mechanism around its base clicked shut, holding the containment unit in place should the ship experience any turbulence. It would keep it from falling over and rolling about. “It would be safe enough there.”

“Thor’s instructions were to take the gem somewhere far away from Asgard and hide it.” Fandral nodded, keeping his eyes trained out upon the starpath before them. “He doesn’t even want to know where. Asgard is not as safe as it once was, my rotund friend.” He glanced back over his shoulder, quirking a smile beneath his moustache. “I suspect he’s taken into account that Loki has full reign of the place.”

“There is a place in Vanaheim,” Hogun offered with a grim nod. “I know it well. We may hide the gem there.”

“Turning our sails towards Vanaheim...” Fandral adjusted the ship’s controls.

Volstagg joined them in the cockpit, hands clasped over his girth as he looked out towards the stars. He sighed, thoughts quick to return to matters of the belly now that they were out of danger. Hands placed as they were, he could feel as well as hear the rumble of his stomach.

“As long as where we’re going has a place to sit down and eat.” He grinned and nudged Hogun with his elbow. “What do you say, Hogun? A proper feast among the Vanir to celebrate the arrival of the galaxy’s saviors? We _did_ just defeat the undefeatable Thanos.”

“Defeat is a bit of a stretch, I think,” said Fandral. “But thwarted, for certain.”

Hogun did not answer, though he frowned, shaking his head as he blinked.

Volstagg thought he saw a shadow flicker across Hogun’s face, but he could not immediately think of why that might have been worrisome.

He thought of food instead. Succulent meats roasting over a massive fire. Wine flowing as freely as a river. Steaming breads fresh from the oven and fruit so satisfying and crisp to bite into...

Fandral’s voice interrupted his thoughts, calling him back as if from a fog.

“—should bring the gem up here. Perhaps it’s best we all keep an eye on it.”

“Eh?” Volstagg blinked.

He glanced back towards the console where he had set the lantern.

It was gone. And yet, he couldn’t quite remember why it had been important in the first place...?

“Volstagg?” Fandral glanced back. “Bring it up here.”

“Bring what?” Volstagg blinked.

Fandral frowned at him.

“The gem, you great lout. That’s what this has all been about, hasn’t it? We need to...to...”

He frowned suddenly as well, having forgotten what it was he’d been saying.

“Sorry. What were we talking about?”

“Hrnn,” said Hogun.

*****

Elsewhere, the battle raged on over the planet surface.

Steve, Sam, and Rhodey traveled close together as they escaped with the space gem. Steve kept hold of it, tucked securely in his belt, piloting a stolen Chitauri flyer while Sam and Rhodey provided air cover.

They ducked and dodged and darted through the chaos, heading for a Nova Corps ship positioned in the upper atmosphere, waiting ready for them to board and escape.

As it turned out, steering an alien aircraft wasn’t actually that hard, once Steve knew which control meant “stop” and which one was the accelerator. They weren’t really all that different in basic structure to machine workings back on Earth.

Chitauri and Nova Corps and Ravagers and Asgardians and a lot of other aliens Steve didn’t know blasted and shrieked by on all sides. Explosions made the air reverberate all the way into his lungs with impact, and Steve’s ears had all but gone numb to the noise. He focused ahead, spinning the flyer in a barrel roll, narrowly missing the blast of debris as a ship overhead took a direct hit and plummeted in a fiery ball down towards the planet surface below.

“Hey Cap!” Sam shouted over the noise in their comm units.

“Yeah?” answered Steve.

“Remember when I said your Avenging world was crazy?”

“Rings a bell.” Steve ducked and kicked a Chitauri off the back of his flyer as it landed, scrambled to grab a hold.

“Well, I take it back. This is way beyond crazy!”

Steve shrugged.

“Look on the bright side.” He grabbed the controls of the flyer again, pushing it to arc up and towards their getaway, further away from the battle. “This will make a great story later.”

“Aw yeah,” Rhodey’s mechanized voice chimed in.

Blaster fire erupted all around. Lasers cut the air. Aliens shrieked and died, taking as many opposing forces with them as they could on their way down.

Steve squinted his eyes and blocked debris with his shield, half-crouching behind the flyer’s controls for extra cover. Sam and Rhodey flew around him like circling atoms, keeping the path clear.

“Can’t you use that thing to teleport?” Rhodey’s voice made it through the din, punctuated by the sound of quick, controlled bursts from his shoulder cannon. “That would make this a lot easier.”

“Not sure how it works,” said Steve. “And I’d rather not end up like the Red Sk—”

One flyer made it through, ramming Steve’s platform from underneath at full speed in a suicide attack. Both vehicles exploded, raining debris and shrapnel down in arcs.

Steve flipped free just in time, though the heat seared his skin. He could feel it even through his uniform.

Then he was falling.

“Steve!” shouted Sam, immediately forgetting the use of code names and folding his wings into a dive to go after him. Rhodey spun in the air and covered his back, blasting the Chitauri ready to fall into the gap in their defenses. Steve spread his arms and legs to slow his fall and reached for Sam’s hand, just grabbing on when another Chitauri flyer made it through and swooped to his side.

The alien made a grab for his belt, as if it knew just where the gem was kept.

Steve kicked at its metal maskplate. When that didn’t dissuade it, he hooked onto the pilot with his legs and used the leverage to flip himself down to the flyer’s platform. He kicked out at the Chitauri legs and spun, slamming his shield into the back of its head.

It staggered. Briefly stumbled.

Then a green ball of light coalesced into its hand, erupted into a blast that landed squarely in Steve’s chest.

His armor got the brunt of it, but it sent him tumbling back off the platform, minus his belt.

The Chitauri turned and sent a similar blast of energy towards Rhodey as he swooped in to attack. Enough to knock him off course. Long enough for the flyer to get away.

It didn’t look like a very Chitauri way to fight, Steve thought as he fell.

Sam came after him again. This time he caught him.

“Go after the gem!” Steve shouted, only able to watch as the flyer was quickly lost among the chaos of the battle. “That’s priority!”

“Sorry, Cap.” Sam righted him and held on until he could get him to a solid surface. The beat of his wings made great swooshing sounds in the air. “Disobeying orders.”

Steve let his head drop back as he groaned, not really needing to see Sam’s eyes to let him know his exasperation.

But he wasn’t really surprised, either.

Sam grinned.

“Sorry, sir. You can take it up later with my commanding officer.”

*****

Wanda was still on the planet surface, making her way towards Starlord’s ship where it was waiting to pick the rest of them up.

The battle continued to rage overhead, and the going was slow, stopping every few feet to blast and fight off lingering remnants of Chitauri guards, until she managed to catch hold of a few of their minds and turn them to fight for her.

The hive mind was surprisingly easy to manipulate, once she found a way in.

She carried the green soul gem in her hand. She’d wrapped it in a scarf and tied the bundle closed so it wouldn’t come into contact with her bare skin.

She didn’t know its power, but she could make a guess, and it was considerable.

She stepped over warped and twisted black rock under the sickly red-orange light of an alien sun, keeping the Chitauri around her like a barrier, until one dropped from the sky into her path.

This one was different, walking upright with a mask over its face.

Wanda narrowed her eyes as she surveyed the new enemy. It stepped off its flyer (that had crashed more than properly landed), several of its workings melted and smoldering where it had taken hits.

She bared her teeth.

This was no Chitauri.

“Kill him,” she whispered to her soldiers.

They surged forward and attacked.

The masked figure fought them off quickly. Efficiently. He used knives and blasts of some kind of greenish energy. Wanda couldn’t read him, but she had felt those defenses before. It was not hard to recognize the lean, hungry grace in his movements.

She moved to get behind him as more Chitauri attacked, directing their actions with coiling red power and gestures of her hands. Once he was sufficiently distracted and nearly overwhelmed, she darted in close, thrusting one hand towards the back of his head.

If she could make contact – focus hard enough – she could blast through those mental walls. Then she would know for certain what was lurking beyond that cracked veneer...

The figure caught her wrist, and turned, blasting away the last of the Chitauri with an eruption of green and black power all around.

Wanda cried out, grabbing for tighter hold of the gem.

The figure reached for it as well.

Both their hands grasped it at the same time.

Power tingled through Wanda’s fingertips. Up her arm. She felt the sharp stab of it like a snake striking into the very core of her being – a pain that was not quite physical – and she gasped and froze as her eyes grew wide.

The face of the mask before her changed. Took on an image she knew.

One she knew painfully, heart-breakingly well.

“Wanda,” said Pietro, in a voice as thin and insubstantial as the ghostly apparition that appeared before her.

He reached out a hand towards her, palm open and seeking. The light in his dark eyes wanting to grasp.

“...no!”

Wanda shrieked and dropped the stone, scrambling back over the rocks as she tripped and fell. The hard ground scraped her knees and tore her stockings, but she only distantly felt it, looking up to the figure with tear-rimmed eyes where her brother had been only a moment before.

The figure staggered back and stumbled in much the same way, as if to get away from her. Shaking its head and coughing a hollow sound, it recovered more quickly, and swiped up the gem where it had been dropped.

It turned and stole away towards Thanos’ keep, leaving Wanda shivering on the ground.

*****

Natasha made her way through Thanos’ stronghold. She had hung back from the others, sticking to the shadows and out of sight while the rest made their considerably more noisy escape. Now she navigated the massive keep quickly and quietly, while the chaos drew most of all attention outside.

She carried a metallic-looking orb in one hand, tucked behind her where its light would be less likely to give her position away.

It glowed with a faintly purple hue.

She moved unseen until she darted around a corner in the wake of a passing unit of Chitauri guards, using their noise to cover the sound of her steps. She crouched low and all but ran into the figure that appeared suddenly before her in the corridor, reasonably sure it hadn’t been there just a moment ago.

Tall. With a mask.

She didn’t waste any time, and spun on her heel to land a kick at the figure’s neck.

The figure caught her ankle. Twisted. Natasha rolled with it and went to the floor, sweeping her leg at the back of its knees.

The figure dodged. Turned. Met her very nearly move for move.

But Natasha picked up quickly on the fact the figure wasn’t favorite its right hand. In fact, its arm was splinted. She made a grab for its wrist and wrenched, landed a punch also in its side, rewarded by a familiar-sounding shout.

Natasha didn’t have to rip off the mask and toss it aside to know who it was, but she did it anyway. Just for the satisfaction.

Loki turned his head and spit black blood, still reeling where he landed, bent on one knee.

Natasha used the orb she held like a set of brass knuckles as she slammed one more punch against his jaw. For old times’ sake.

“Looking for this?” she panted.

Loki reeled, full-bodied, wiping a smear of blood from his lip as he waited for the pain to ebb.

“You knew I’d come,” he half-laughed, remembering fragments of a conversation they’d once had.

“I knew you’d pull something.”

“Would it help if I explained my brilliant plan?”

“Nope.” Natasha hit him again.

Loki snarled and lurched back up to his feet. He caught her wrist as she swung at him once more, then latched onto the whole of his arm to vault herself up. Legs wrapped around his neck. Ready to snap his spinal column or take him down to the ground.

“You could help a great deal by simply handing it over,” Loki grunted, blinking his physical form just incorporeal enough to escape.

Natasha dropped to the ground, landing in a prepared crouch.

“What makes you think I’d wanna do that?”

She swept a leg at his ankles.

Loki vanished. Reappeared behind her.

“Because you know how brilliant plans work,” he said, even as he aimed a dagger to stab. Natasha rolled away so his blade struck against the keep’s metallic flooring. She didn’t stop moving, rolling, ducking, twisting, and weaving to stay on her feet. To not stay still. “You know what it’s like to do what you must, despite what others may think.” Loki sneered as he followed her, stalking hunched like a predator. “Also, you can’t win against me.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to make it easy.”

She threw a small, metallic disc at him, catching him in the shoulder. The electric zap hurt and numbed almost all of Loki’s side.

He roared and held back nothing of his coiled strength and starved desperation after that – insult compounding the pain of his injuries – but trying to strike the infuriating woman was like trying to catch smoke on a windy day.

They fought, chased, tumbled and struggled.

Loki took some satisfaction in her cry as he landed a glancing blow with his dagger, but not deep enough to kill. Or really even slow her down. While she took full advantage of the fact he was wounded, landing her knee into his side and punching his splinted arm.

At last Loki landed his hold on the orb, and wrenched it from her grasp.

Natasha let him have it.

She let go, kicking away, and took off running down the corridor at full speed.

Loki staggered and caught his breath, allowing himself a small smile. He indulged a moment’s swell of triumph in the sight of her retreat, until he heard the faint ticking sound that rose in the resulting quiet.

He looked down to the orb.

He clicked it open.

He only barely had time to register the explosive planted inside before it erupted in his face.

*****

The real power gem was outside, being smuggled to safety by Starlord and his crew.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Quill urged, waving the others towards his ship where it was waiting on an outcropping of rock.

“I swear this thing is not worth whatever units we can get for it,” Rocket complained, latched onto Groot’s shoulder as they ran. Ducking under the ship and blaster fire that still burst around them to all sides. “Didn’t we go through this once already?!”

“Then we can ask double the price!” Quill shouted, jerking as a ship crashed into the ground near them. Close enough to shower them with shards of rock and smoking debris. “C’mon, guys! Move it!”

“We’re not selling it this time!” Gamora answered, leading the way as she cut a path through the scattered remnants of Thanos’ forces trying to stop them. “The gems are too dangerous! We’re going to have to hide—!”

Another ship crashed, this time in front of them. It slammed into the porous ground and carved a path through the landscape as it slid, metal screaming and foundation crunching under its own weight, until it hit the edge of a crater and toppled over the side.

It left a decent-sized canyon between them and the Milano.

“Aw, flark,” Quill groaned.

The ship that fell down into the crater exploded, the heat enough to make them all wince and throw up their arms to shield their eyes.

“Hey, no problem,” said Rocket, grinning a show of teeth. “We got this. Right, buddy?”

He patted Groot’s shoulder, who nodded.

“I am Groot.”

Groot backed up, planting his feet into a wide stance on the ground. Branches and leaves grew and arched outward as they sprouted, forming a solid base around him. Then he reached his arms for the opposite side of the canyon as he arched, pushing himself into the form of a bridge. A few flowers even bloomed along his back and shoulders.

“Never ceases to amaze,” Quill smirked. He stepped onto Groot’s back to lead the way across. “Alright, Guardians, here we—”

An enemy flyer whizzed through the canyon, ramming Groot at about the level of his ankles to snap the bridge’s foundation.

“I am Groot?” he frowned, looking up questioningly before he fell.

Quill tumbled after him.

“Aw, _flark!_ ”

“Groot!” Rocket ran to the crevice’s edge, paws braced on the upturned rock as he looked over the side.

The crevice wasn’t deep. Its sides slanted. Groot and Quill hit the ground and rolled, sliding to a stop near the bottom.

Scraped, but mostly unharmed. It would take some work to get them out.

Rocket cupped his paws around his mouth as he called down.

“Hang on, guys! We’ll get you outta there!”

“Just keep the gem protected!” Quill shouted back up. “You still got it, right?”

“What?” Rocket blinked. “I thought you had it?”

Quill blinked back.

“...I thought you had it?”

“I don’t have it!”

“Wait. Who has it?!”

The same flyer came around again, strafing a line of blaster fire across the ground where Rocket stood. Rocket swore and threw himself out of the way as Gamora and Drax dodged in opposite directions, taking cover among the twisted landscape.

The flyer passed by overhead, and a dark figure leaped from it, coming down almost on top of Drax’s turned back.

(Drax had the gem. Gamora had assigned it to him for safekeeping.)

(She hadn’t told the others.)

A snarling roar that sounded to Rocket like a cat being tortured met Drax’s overly enthusiastic shout in return as the two figures clashed, and proceeded to beat the snot out of each other.

Rocket got up into a crouch, and unhooked the massive gun strapped across his back.

“Oh yeah?” he growled, turning the gun’s barrel to aim towards the attacker. “Munch on this!”

He fired. A direct hit. The explosive round bowled the figure over and sent him sprawling close to the crater’s edge where the ship crashed, and the enemy flyer was quick to join it.

“Yes!” Drax shouted, raising his fist towards the flames. “Yes! Good!”

He didn’t hear Gamora’s shout of warning in time to dodge the blasts of green magic that came in a rapid volley, each one knocking Drax back a step until one final burst sent him over the edge of the crevice as well.

“Hey!” Rocket’s tail puffed as the figure got up – still trailing smoke from the blast – and limped towards the crevice’s edge. “Don’t walk away from me!”

He took aim again.

He only refrained from firing because Gamora closed in, spinning an attack of kicks, punches, and swords so fast Rocket could scarcely keep up.

“Rocket!” she shouted. “Get to Drax! Get the gem away!”

The attacker – Loki – was barely recognizable. Half his skin had been scorched black from explosives. His hair hung forward over his eyes, scraggled and damp with sweat or blood. His eyes alternated between deadly sharp green and murderously glowing red, and parts of him looked to Gamora as if it shifted to shades of...blue?

He didn’t have the look of someone who should still be able to stand, let alone fight.

She could practically smell the influence of magic radiating from him.

And something else...

“The gem, Rocket! The gem!”

“Screw this!” Of course Rocket didn’t listen. He aimed his gun and fired into Loki’s turned back, blasts of energy and then solid slug shots from his sidearm, snarling until the clip was empty.

Loki spun, settled vicious eyes upon him, and bared his teeth to match.

“Miserable, undeveloped _rat!_ ”

Gamora drove her blade up to the hilt through the back of Loki’s ribs.

Was she surprised he’d betrayed them? Not really.

Rocket darted in from the other side, scrambling up Loki’s leg and over his arm onto his shoulders, where he bit and scratched and clawed at his face and hair.

Buckling under the weight of them both, Loki staggered, driven by a few more of Gamora’s stabs towards the edge of the crater the ship had fallen into.

It was deeper than the crevice, and a much harsher fall.

Loki swore and grunted a curse as he reached up, and tore Rocket from his face. He held the raccoon only a moment at arm’s length by the tail, then threw him over the edge.

“No!” Gamora shouted, bashing the blunt end of her sword against his jaw.

She took a running start, and leaped after him. She had a much better chance of catching him and landing without hurting herself.

Loki stood for a moment at the crater’s edge, panting for breath. Bent double from his wounds. Slow drops of blood trickled onto the scorched and twisted ground, hissing as they dissolved where they landed.

But he smiled, at last, and turned away, limping into the shallower crevice to retrieve the power gem from an unconscious Drax’s belt pouch.

The gem glowed an intense violet, wrapped still in its protective orb.

“One more to go,” Loki breathed, deriving some small comfort from that.

Until he saw the other glowing lights wrapped around it. A series of charged munitions designed to be set off if they weren’t deactivated in a certain sequence before the orb was opened.

One of them beeped the sound of an activated countdown timer.

Loki’s shoulders sagged.

“Not again,” he groaned.

Then it exploded.

*****

_Her eyes were the blue of the highest point in the sky, edged with crystal tears where there should have been clouds._

_But still she smiled, the stately posture of her regality doing nothing to dull the affection and love such eyes could hold._

_“You’re always so perceptive,” she said, “about everyone but yourself.”_

_“Hello mother,” Loki murmured, tipping up his chin in a show of defiance. “Have I made you proud?”_

_He touched her hand, but his fingers passed through her image, and she faded to nothing._

*****

Loki clawed his way up the jagged rock wall of the crevice until he reached the top.

It was not easy, denied the use of one hand and carrying the weight of five infinity stones with him, nevermind the extend of his injuries...which were not healing. The gems themselves weighed almost nothing; the burden they proved was not the physical sort.

Loki could feel their power calling out to him every time he grunted and strained. Slipped. Pulled himself up another length. He could feel them begging to be used. Loki set his teeth and ground his jaw and pushed on, focusing instead on the bite of sharp rock as it cut into his palm.

_Almost there,_ he told himself, as he had several times since before leaving Asgard to go on this venture. Since long before any of this had started.

_Almost there._

_Just a little more._

_A little more..._

Just when he was certain his strength was going to abandon him for good, a hand entered his sight from above.

It grabbed hold of his own, gentle but firm, and hauled him up over the crevice’s edge.

Loki sagged as his knees settled onto solid, blessedly flat ground. As he caught his breath he looked up, meeting Vision’s eyes.

“Well,” he laughed, with a sound more like a wheeze. Loki wiped the back of one hand across his brow. “You’ve saved me the trouble of finding you.”

Vision’s concern shone through his gaze as he frowned. Looked Loki over. Loki was certain he presented a terrible image: scorched, scraped, stabbed, bruised, battered. He could feel every one of his wounds aching with a dull throb so pervasive it had almost become mindless background noise by now. Something he could ignore easily enough.

It was almost done.

“You are not well,” said the Vision, with a genuine down-turn of his voice. “I think you are near death.”

“Perhaps,” Loki coughed, and wiped black spittle from his mouth. “It will save everyone else the trouble.”

Loki did not have time to dwell upon the obvious. There was work to be done.

He eyed the yellow jewel glimmering on Vision’s brow. The mind gem. Back where it had initially been placed.

The last of the six stones.

“I think you know what I plan next,” he wheezed.

Vision nodded.

“I do,” he said. “Though I do not think it is a wise course of action.”

Loki grunted as he struggled to his feet. He breathed easier once he stood. Took the pressure off his ribs.

Vision moved close to help him.

This time, Loki looped an arm over his shoulders, allowing it.

He ventured a small, tired smile.

“I never claimed to be wise.”

Vision did not return it.

“You are aware you cannot take it by force,” he said.

Loki coughed and pulled away, balancing himself on his own two feet.

At least he could still stand.

Barely.

“And yet I will try.”

Vision looked at him strangely. Confused. And a little sad.

“Why?” he asked. “Why can you not admit defeat, and work with us? Why must you reel against those who would help you?”

Loki laughed at him. A hollow, dry sound. Like black sand over glass.

“Why? Why. Oh, why. That’s always the question, isn’t it? Why?” He sneered, slouching as he held himself: the whole of him one hunched, dark shape. Like a cornered animal, wounded and in its last desperation. A black outline of a monster. “Why do any of us do anything?”

“Love,” Vision said, his mind unchanged on the matter.

Loki turned his head. Spit more black.

“I suppose that’s close enough,” he rasped, licking dry, cracking lips. “Give me the gem.”

Vision shook his head.

“I cannot do that.”

“Then strike me down!” Loki snarled, with sudden vehemence. He was tired of these constant obstacles. “Or else use the mind stone’s power to wipe my memories as you offered! Take this pain from me! Change the core of my very being and force me to acquiesce!” He moved closer to him, aggressively menacing. Forcing Vision to retreat a wary step. “Do what you must, as do we all. Whatever you decide, do it quickly. There isn’t much time left.”

Vision looked away, his gaze lowering under conflict and a sudden...guilt?

“It is in my power to alter your mind,” he said, with realization as he spoke the words. “And yet, if I did, I believe it would make me the same as those who would use its power for ill.”

“All think the best of their own actions,” Loki drawled. His energy was fading quickly. “That is why you are heroes. I have no such delusions. I do what I must, make myself what I must, do achieve what is necessary.” He tilted his head towards him. “If you live long enough, you’ll find yourself doing the same.”

Vision looked at him.

“And that sacrifice of self marks you as a villain?”

Loki did not answer. He only narrowed his eyes to dangerous slits.

Vision looked down. He raised one hand to cover his brow, touching the gem that glowed there.

“I do not wish to fight you,” he said, and with the passing effort of a thought, drew the gem away in his hand. “But...nor do I desire to stop you.”

He held the gem out towards him.

It glowed with its own inner light. The color of a new sunrise.

“There is a flaw in your logic, but truth in your intent. A villain has paths and choices open to him that heroes may not see.”

“Not as many as you would think,” Loki mumbled, and took the stone.

“And the truth is,” said Vision, with a sound of recitation. “That as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.”

Loki paused in his turning away to look at him. Levelly. With perhaps something akin to a new understanding.

Vision said nothing more, but tilted his head. Granting his leave.

Loki turned and staggered away, clutching the gem close.

If Vision expected any gratitude, Loki did not give it.

If Loki anticipated any offer of help, Vision did not extend it.

The Vision turned and flew the other way, returning to join the others.

*****

Thanos had not yet fled the battle, as Loki knew he wouldn’t.

His fortress overrun. The gems stolen from him. His forces even now being beaten down by enemy ships. He still refused to concede defeat.

Loki supposed that was the commonality that had allowed them to work together in the first place.

The throne room Thanos had designed for himself near the top of his fortress offered a good view of the battle still going on in the sky as Loki dragged himself into it. Limping. His breath coming in short wheezes. The guards who had tried to stop him lay dead in the corridor behind, sprawled across the floor in their own blood.

Thanos turned away from the window where he stood, gazing thoughtfully out, and arched one vaguely interested eyebrow.

Loki was a mess. His leathers hung from him in tatters. He could not walk upright for the limp in his step, leaving the impression of blood-traced footprints behind him. Breathing only came through a great effort, and he held his shattered arm tight against his front, as if it held in the whole of his innards from spilling out across the floor.

Thanos hummed a low sound.

“How the king of Asgard has fallen,” he said, with a sound of amusement. “You are not dead yet?”

Loki coughed. He no longer bothered to wipe away the black taint that flecked his lips.

He sagged to his knees near the center of the room, dropping his chin to his chest. No longer possessing the energy to hold up his head.

“Tyrant,” he rasped. His voice as from one gargling. “I bring you...a gift...”

Loki held out his good – well, less damaged – hand. In his palm sparked five gems of brilliant color, their radiance only having grown now that they rested in contact. Only the violet power gem remained sealed in its orb, that it would not come into actual contact with Loki’s person.

Thanos’ eyes immediately alighted, their greed and hunger reflective of the light of the stones.

The golden sunrise that was the mind gem. Promising unquestioning obedience. An open doorway into the thoughts and motivations of all others.

The swirling lightning-blue of the space gem. Within its crystalline structure lay the whole of the known cosmos, reduced to the size and space of a single thought.

The blood red of the reality gem. The swirling Aether. A storm raging within only barely contained, ready to be unleashed upon entire galaxies, prepared to skin and twist and warp to its wielder’s whim.

The opal orange of the gem of time. Its sweet whispers of fate avoided. Changed. Its carefree mania possessing no knowledge of consequences.

The soul gem. Deep sea green. Power extending beyond the realm of all natural life and into death. Then still further. Perhaps the gem Thanos coveted most of all.

Thanos’ face split into a slow, wicked smile as he savored the sight of the gems reunited at last. He drew in a deep breath, tight with an anticipation he could all but taste.

“My agent triumphs again,” he rumbled, and stepped away from the window. He approached Loki on slow, weighted steps, unhurried by any sense of urgency the battle outside would have otherwise provided. Knowing all was well and right and as it should be.

He eyed Loki where he remained slouched on his knees, tipping up an imperious chin.

“And what trick do you play at now, little king?”

“No tricks,” Loki wheezed, shaking his head only the barest amount. Even that threatened to topple his precarious balance. “I have none left.”

“You will understand if I do not at all believe you,” Thanos smirked.

Loki did not meet his eyes. He let his head bow forward, hanging dejectedly.

“There is no reason to prolong the inevitable,” he murmured. “I’ve lost. My plans as I had intended them were found out.” He shook his head again, a break in his voice. “This is the only path I see left open to me...”

Thanos passed his hand in a gesture across a glowing panel near the center of the floor. From the metallic plating, a portion opened. A column rose up from beneath the foundation, a gauntlet displayed upon it under a protective shield. A massive, metallic glove of a tarnished gold color. Unremarkable save for its implication.

“And what path is that?” Thanos rumbled, humoring him.

“Appeasement,” said Loki. He lifted his eyes to him, watched as Thanos rotated the glove to slip his hand into it.

He raised it from the column. Opened and closed the fingers to test them.

Thanos had taken his advice after all. He’d forged himself a new gauntlet.

It was not the gauntlet that mattered as much as the stones.

“You seek to appease me?” Thanos’ grin remained, looking down over Loki in unhidden, sadistic delight. “And why would I agree to any conditions you name?”

“I brought you the gems...”

“You also sought to keep them from me. You resisted me.” He snorted a disdainful sound. “In truth, I prefer your childish defiance to this pathetic show of sycophancy. Before, you were at least entertaining.”

Thanos snatched the gems from his hands.

He set about placing them into the indentations on the gauntlet as it had been crafted. One gem for each finger. The last over the back of the wrist.

“I have nothing left to offer,” rasped Loki, “save this.”

“You did not have to go through such trouble. I would have collected the gems myself in time.”

Each click of the gems into place reverberated in Loki’s heart. It was a small, metallic sound. Barely a click. Yet he could feel the pulse of power as the gems aligned themselves through the pathways in the gauntlet and to each other. Each one placed amplified their power exponentially more.

“I wanted the satisfaction myself.” Loki swallowed. The room was growing darker. The air thicker. “And some leverage with which to bargain.”

“Very well.” Thanos’ grin grew more manic by the moment. He scarcely paid any attention to Loki, the whole of him devoted to the placing of the gems with a slow, worshipful reverence. “Ask what you will, so I may have the pleasure of denying you.”

Loki drew in a shuddering breath. He held it for a moment.

“Spare Asgard,” he rasped as he let it out, tight with control so his voice would not waver. “I have no care for what happens to the others. To the universe. Only...spare Asgard. I was not strong enough to protect it.”

“Oh? And what of your precious sibling?”

“He’s not my brother,” Loki snapped, quiet and bitter. “Kill him with the rest. He would have only tried to stop me.”

“You have said those words before. You did not mean them then, either.”

“I’m dying!” Loki gasped, no longer possessing the strength to keep it in check. He sagged forward onto one hand, barely holding himself up from the floor. “I failed! Odin decreed that if Asgard fell, so would I. The others will not save me. This is the only way I can see...the only thing I can think of...”

Thanos sneered down at him as one would an invasive insect.

He placed the fifth gem.

Loki still held the orb with the final stone inside. The gem of power.

“Please...I’m begging you...”

“I will not spare Asgard,” Thanos rumbled, flexing the gauntlet as the five infinity gems placed upon it glowed and hummed with luminous power. It lit up the whole of him. Exuded an air that surpassed the physical. Surpassed even godhood. “Mistress Death will have only the finest of tribute. No realm will be spared. Not the highest spires of your precious home, nor the deepest warren of the furthest planets.”

He reached down and picked Loki violently up by his throat. He held him off the floor in his gloved hand. In his other he tore away the orb from his grasp.

Loki choked and struggled only minimally, kicking weakly at Thanos’ armor.

“Though I think I will save you for last,” Thanos grinned, watching him writhe as he squeezed. “Perhaps I’ll keep your soul nearby. Always at my heel like an obedient dog. I would not dream of denying you the sight of seeing Asgard fall as it’s burned beyond ruin—”

_“LOKI!”_

Thunder. Then lightning.

The side of Thanos’ stronghold burst inward as Thor slammed his way through, collapsing the whole of one wall into a shower of debris.

He was rage: each bunched muscle coiled with it, a white-hot glow of power in his eyes. His glare fell on Loki, but it was toward Thanos he thrust out Mjolnir’s head, striking with the power of a thousand unleashed storms.

It had minimal effect, of course. Thanos shrugged it off easily with one brush of the gauntlet. But it provided distraction enough for Loki to summon one of his blades.

One calculated stab, and he severed the inside of Thanos’ wrist, just beneath the lining of the gauntlet’s edge. Another stab severed his hand entirely, dropping the gauntlet to the ground with a solid, metallic thunk.

Cutting off hands seemed a habit Loki did not mind developing as of late.

The sound of Thanos’ infuriated scream was lost in the chaos that followed as the other Avengers – and their allies – poured into the opening Thor had created, attacking as a whole like a wave crashing over the stronghold’s defenses.

The orb rolled away across the floor.

Loki snatched it up, cracked it open, and paid no heed to how the power gem seared past his skin and through his entire body as he slammed it into place in the last spot of the gauntlet.

Similarly as he ignored his own screams as he forced his shattered wrist to move, to open his hand, and slip the gauntlet upon it.

He heard Thor’s roar above the rest. Perhaps Thanos’ close behind.

Loki closed his hand into a fist, pain screaming and blood burning and the very foundation of his physical form threatening to rip apart, fiber from fiber.

He closed his eyes, letting the feel of it all wash over him. The pain. The rage.

And then, the power.

*****

Loki left the battle-torn planet behind.

He left everything behind.

The feeling of standing on solid ground. A sense of solidity. Very nearly the concept of identity itself as he rose and rose. Ascended.

In the space of a breath, he had risen to the level of the stars. He turned his gaze across them as if over a field of wildflowers. One he could easily pass through, trailing his hand along the fringes of galaxies as soft as petals.

A brush of his wrist. A breath. A whim. He could send them scattering on a cosmic wind to the far reaches of the galaxy if he so chose. Let chaos decide where they landed.

The very notion made Loki giddy as a boy.

Loki smiled, and laughed. The pain of physicality left far behind. All of creation stretched out before him now: a sea of endless possibility.

_This_ was what it felt like to be a god.

The first thing he did was smite Thanos where he stood. He did not wipe him from all of existence, tempting as it was to erase any trace of him having ever existed. No. Loki could see the threads of time all around him. He could pluck and play them like an instrument, or wind them idly around his finger in idle fascination. He saw the picture such threads wove from a great distance. One no mortal could ever comprehend.

To remove Thanos from all he’d wrought in the past would have altered too much. But to remove him from the future – every possibility of the future – suited Loki just fine.

One wave of his hand, and all that remained of the Mad Titan was a memory. And a dark stain on the floor.

The second thing Loki did was return to Asgard.

It took nothing. A whim. A will. The space of a thought, and he was no longer standing in Thanos’ ruined throne room.

Instead, Loki found himself back on the balcony overlooking the top of the citadel.

He looked over the city’s wounds. Like great scars clawed into the landscape.

He held out his hand.

Loki spread the fingers of the gauntlet. He felt the power beneath their tips. Captured and echoed and amplified by the gems.

True infinity.

He could do anything. He could turn back time to restore buildings to the pristine condition they had been before Thanos’ attack. He could use the soul gem to return those lost from the dead. He could use the power gem to make the shields burn bright around Asgard once more. The mind gem to wipe the thoughts of those who would have noticed. Who would have questioned.

The power burned. It itched under Loki’s skin as if too long exposed to a fire’s heat. It made his grin split manic across his face. Light dance in his eyes with a childish glee. It rose like fumes of heady drink, wafting over him. Making him dizzy.

It felt _wonderful_.

He laughed as he restored Asgard to all it had been and more – a few improvements here and there, courtesy the reality gem...things which should have been put in place all along – and looked over his new realm as if a newly-made father. Proud. Possessive.

Even Odin could not deny him his success now.

The Realm Eternal shone golden once more, and Loki departed from it again, confident it would be left in safety.

Next, he went to see the Norns.

*****

The root-formed cave that sheltered Urd’s well stood much as Loki had last left it: dark, oppressively heavy, approachable only by the most dangerous paths. Sheltering a power within that was treacherous even to breathe.

Loki let himself in, sundering the edges of Nornheim with a blast of searing light. Those monsters that coiled and hid among the roots shrieked and fled, scrambling up to higher eaves before they burned.

Loki could feel their eyes upon him, drawn in tantalized curiosity. He could hear the great beast breathing somewhere beyond as he stepped into the cave where the well glowed. Where the Norns concealed themselves in their black alcoves.

“What is...”

“...the meaning...”

“...of this?” they hissed, like collective wintering snakes.

Loki stood before them, his chin tilted up. He spread his hands to either side, the gauntlet’s jewels glowing six points of prismatic light. A constellation in the dark.

“I have returned, Fates of All,” he said, with no small amount of smirking at his statement of the obvious. “As I promised I would.”

Their words whispered power. A cold wind spun and chilled about him as they examined him from all angles, fascinated by the new toy he carried.

“Little Laufeyson...”

“...returns with...”

“...more gems.”

“Yes.” Loki held the gauntlet aloft for them to see. Even in the choking darkness, it radiated. Its own beacon of light. “As you knew I would, no doubt?”

They did not answer, but he could hear them murmuring among themselves. As if their whispers were written upon the air for him to read.

“What do you want?” one of them at last asked from the black recesses.

“Do you not know?” Loki teased, scarcely able to resist.

“Tell us...”

“...little Laufeyson...”

“...speak the words...”

“Very well.” Loki closed the fingers of his gauntleted hand. The gauntlet itself had reformed once he’d put the final gem into place. It fitted him perfectly, as if an extension of himself.

As if _made_ for him.

“I have come to present my final ultimatum.”

He lowered the gauntlet to his side.

“Give me what I want,” he said. No longer a plea. A request. It was a demand.

For a moment, the Norns were silent. Loki turned his eyes about the cavern as he glared into the darkness, hardly fooled by their shadows and illusions any longer. As satisfying as their reticence was, his patience had already burned thin.

He had come too far. Sacrificed far too much.

“Give me what I want,” he repeated with slow, deliberate pronunciation. This time, it was a threat.

“If we consent,” spoke the Norns as one, finally. “Do you propose the gauntlet and its gems in trade?”

“Why would I do that?” He smiled with mock sweetness. “You turned down my gift of the Aether. Why would six infinity stones suit you?”

“You do not know...”

“...what we may do...”

“...with such trinkets.”

“Trinkets?” Loki snarled. “You already control the fates of all men! Are you not possessed of all knowledge and workings of the universe? You may lurk there and hide in your burrows, but I see you now. I have escaped you! I have broken free of your molds!” He swept the gauntlet in a grand arc, its light like trails in the air. “You have no power over me any longer! You are nothing!”

Their tittering laughter swelled in the chamber. It carried with it the mocking calls of crows. The frightened bleating of goats. The howl of distant wolves.

“You are right, little Laufeyson.”

“Our power is boundless.”

“Just as we are bound by it.”

“We have no need for shiny jewels.”

“The answer is still no.”

A hot wave of anger rolled up Loki’s back and off his shoulders. He let out a long breath, firm through a stilled, stoic expression.

Both hands tightened at his sides. His eyes flashing daggers through the dark.

“Very well,” he rumbled, tight with control, as the ground began to shake. Flares and sparks of light ignited among the gems. “Then there is no further point in discussion. I shall _take_ what I want.”

The Norns still laughed. Still flitted through the dark alcoves of their cave. Loki could make out the ghostly outlines of them: the maiden, the matron, the crone. At once skeletal thin and timeless. Beautiful and terrifying. Forging the very chains they were bound to.

Doing only what they must.

Yes, Loki knew a little something about that.

They still laughed as he bared his teeth in a feral snarl and threw out his hand, thrusting the gauntlet through the layers of reality, allowing the green soul gem to guide him as he felt through the dark and fabric of the cosmos. Reached for what he sought.

The ground shuddered. Great chunks of the cave ceiling collapsed around him as he shook Yggdrasil to its roots with his effort. But he did not stop.

He had only one goal now. He could feel it, grasped at the barest edge of his fingertips.

Loki ground his teeth together as he shouted above the din. Over their laughter and the crash of stone into the well, shattering its calm surface.

He clenched shut his eyes, allowing power to guide him.

“...I want my mother back!”


	6. Temper Our Souls With Flame And Furnace

All was quiet.

And still.

For a moment, Loki was uncertain of where he stood, or even if he stood at all.

No…

No, he wasn’t…standing.

But nor was he sitting.

Or floating.

Or seeing. Or...even breathing, for that matter. He was…

He was…

He was not.

Saying he “was” felt an overstatement of the fact. He... _wasn’t_.

He didn’t know where he was.

Loki could say he existed somewhere in a great white nothing, but even that felt too concrete – too _defined_ – to be truly the case.

There was simply nothing. _He_ was nothing.

An absolute nothing.

There was nothing around him to see or feel or to even really be, for that was the nature of nothing. An absence of all definition. Nothing there to be pointed out as the opposite of being. No one there to acknowledge that there was nothing.

It wasn’t until that thought occurred to Loki that he realized it was terrifying.

He would have scrambled backwards had he any physical form. He would have tried to flee from that place. But there was nowhere to go and nothing to run from. There was no ground or surface to run upon. There was simply…nothing.

...nothing...

Nothing at all.

Loki might have screamed, but noise did not exist. There was no way for sound to be created, let alone reach his ears.

He was certain he’d gone mad.

Or…no, not mad. Worse.

Much, much worse.

He tried to think back. Tried to remember what had last happened at the roots of Yggdrasil.

He remembered attacking the Norns – _he_ remembered…he was still him, at least…that was something…a definition – and how they resisted. He remembered how they had laughed. He remembered a white hot fury at their continued denial of his demands to return his mother to the living plane, and how he’d decided to be done with them.

If they would not give him what he wanted, then he would take it.

It was in his power now. The life gem gave him control and power over the living and the dead.

He would bring Frigga back. He would _force_ it.

Fear stirred in Loki’s heart. Quivered in his nonexistent breast.

Had he gone too far? Had he pressed too much?

He remembered the power quickly building. Growing. He remembered the sense of some barrier about to break.

They had been at the roots of all creation. Had he pressed too hard, and destroyed it?

He couldn’t remember.

He laughed at the idea. It seemed humorous, now, that he should be capable of such a thing. The gauntlet with its six united infinity gems all in their place was supposed to be powerful, but he had no idea it was _that_ powerful…

It was no small wonder Thanos sought it so.

A hand reached out of the nothing and touched his, making Loki realize he had a hand after all.

Or perhaps it only just then came into being…?

Loki startled, jerking away as he turned to look.

He saw her eyes first. Then her smile. Both so like Thor’s in their color of an endless sky and their gentle, sincere warmth. Less so for the lines of care and age that framed them. The fall of long braided hair over her back. A sweep of blue dress. The long dip of her sleeves.

“Loki,” she said, like the exhale of a breath. Relief and reassurance encapsulated in one sound.

Loki stared, his first reaction one of disbelief. It was an illusion. It had to be. A trick of his own subconscious desires.

Even so, he went to her. His arms reached out, wrapped around her shoulders, found them perfectly solid and warm and real as he bent his head and closed his eyes. The weight of his newly-remembered body sagged into her hold as he allowed himself to all but collapse into her embrace. To show this one small moment of weakness.

He whispered...

“Mother.”

Frigga hugged him to her, one hand rising to comb back his hair. The other pressed over his shoulder blade. Holding him. Cradling him no differently than she had when he was young, and could only reach the level of her waist.

“It’s alright, Loki,” she whispered, her voice a soothing calm. Cool water passing over the burn of his fever. “I’m here.”

“Is it…?” Loki’s throat swelled, choking the words. He drew back to arm’s length to look at her, his hands resting over the loose drape of her sleeves. His fingertips pressed in, afraid to let go. Insisting upon maintaining their contact.

He couldn’t finish, lost in how he looked at her.

She was exactly as he remembered.

“Yes, Loki,” she smiled, holding his arms in return. Looking up to him with a joy that bordered on tearful. “Yes. It is me.”

He was not as prepared to see her as he thought he had been.

Loki dropped to his knees, pressing his face into the fabric of her dress as he clasped her about the waist, muffling the release of his grateful, exhausted sob.

Frigga’s gentle hands brushed back his hair. She looked down to him in that way somehow uniquely maternal: not accusing, but sympathetic. Gently chiding as she knew Loki well enough that he would reach reprisal on his own. Doing it for him, to relinquish him of the burden.

“It is me,” she said again, meeting the tears in his eyes as Loki tipped up his head. Offering some of her own. “It is me, Loki. You do not have to cling to your mistrust so.”

Loki’s heart yearned to believe, though doubt lingered, clawing at the depths of his conscience. He pushed it away and fell into her arms once more, embracing her tightly, clenching his eyes shut and allowing the fabric of her dress to catch his tears as they fell.

“I missed you,” he rasped.

“I know, my dearest. I know.” She held him, stroked his hair and brow, for as long as Loki required it. “It’s alright now. It’s alright.”

She whispered it to him, over and over, for as long as he needed to hear while they stood together in the center of nothing. Truly the only things that mattered in all of existence.

She kissed his brow and cheek when he at last drew away. Rose to his feet. He remained close, holding her just above the elbow as she touched him in kind.

“I meant to find you,” said Loki, in sudden rushed explanation. “I meant to return you to life! I went to the Norns and sought a deal with them, but they wouldn’t listen! I tried everything I could think of! The gems seemed the only way…but Thanos would have gathered them as well and then…he tried to...”

“I know.” She stroked his cheek to silence him. “I know, my dearest. I know everything that has happened.”

“You do?” Loki stared, his jaw slack.

“Of course. I was never as far away as you thought.” Her smile there touched upon a light of mischief in her eyes. The exact sort that inspired Loki to such things long ago. “And I _am_ your mother.”

“Of course,” Loki breathed, finding his own smile irrepressible in return. “You know everything.”

They shared a small, quiet laugh, hands linking to be held between them.

They embraced again, and withdrew, to stand united once more.

Loki looked down at their hands, held loosely between them. He brushed a thumb over the back of her palm, wonder and relief and amazement reverent in his touch.

“I missed you,” he said again in a quiet murmur. He could not say it enough. “So much.”

“I know,” said Frigga, squeezing his hands as she spoke. “And I know what you would say next.” Her voice softened even further, should it have been possible. “But it was never your fault.”

Loki didn’t bother wasting his breath with an attempt at justification. He felt sure she already knew everything he would say.

“How could it be anything else?” he rasped between clenched teeth, shaking his head. Closing his eyes against the threat of another onslaught of tears that burned near the top of his nose. “If I hadn’t told that monster where to go...”

“You could not have known what would happen.”

“I should have _been_ there...”

“We all could have made different choices.”

She clasped her hands around his. Pressed warmth into him until he looked up, meeting her eyes under the weight of heavy shame and regret. But still she smiled.

“We cannot undo what we have done,” she said, careful to meet his gaze as she spoke, emphasizing her words. Their meaning. “All we can do is go forward.”

“Actually...” Loki felt himself laugh bitterly. A caustic taste in his mouth. “I can undo what I have done. It is in my power now.”

The bravado lasted only a moment – about as long as it took for Frigga to raise a dubious eyebrow, and for Loki to duck his head under her gaze of scrutiny – and he looked around them, not even shadows cast in the impenetrable nothing.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“You don’t know?” Frigga followed his look, turning slowly. There remained no feature out in the nothing. “You created this place.”

“Did I?” Loki shook his head. “I don’t…remember…”

“It was less an act of will and more one of conscience, I imagine.” She said, gently nodding her head. “This place is the essence of chaos. Absolute freedom. Pure, undefined potential.”

Loki murmured, shaking his head.

“This is the gauntlet’s doing.”

“Perhaps. But its power is guided by your own perception and conscience.” Frigga gestured out into the nothing. “For pure potential, there must be nothing. For the moment something exists, you have set definition and law. You lose a degree of freedom.”

Loki followed her indication, his eyes distant as there dawned new understanding.

It made sense, now, that in a moment’s uncertainty, carrying the sort of power he did, that he would retreat to somewhere safe. Somewhere he felt he knew. Or...didn’t know...as the case may be. Something that felt true. Somewhere he felt was most like him.

A god of chaos.

He made a disgusted face.

“Well, I don’t like it.”

Frigga laughed.

“I believe this is a response to the amount of power you channeled in the Norns’ cave,” she said. “So much at the root of Yggdrasil threatened to topple it. That world could not contain such power. So you created this one in your own fashion.”

“My own world?” Loki’s brow lifted at that. A smile quirked half his mouth. “Well, when you put it that way...”

Frigga raised her other eyebrow, looking at him flatly.

Loki ducked his head once more.

“Yes. Yes. I know. How do we go back?”

She smiled again, softening, and looped her arm through his.

“You only will it,” she said. “But there is no hurry, for one who can reorder time?”

Loki eyed her warily.

“I didn’t think you would condone such things?” he murmured.

“I don’t.” Frigga continued to smile. “I don’t condone meddling in the affairs of the universe at all.” She squeezed his arm. “But you are here, and so am I, and I have not seen you in such a long time. We have much to talk about.”

Loki nodded, and gently probed even as he took up her arm, drew her in close to his side.

“How is it you know so much about the nature of the infinity stones?” he asked.

“Must I remind you who taught you the first thing about magic, dear?” she said simply, looking aside to him.

Loki laughed. He could not help it.

It was returning.

That giddy feeling of relief and joy at the thought of being with her again. That it could be real.

The sound of her laugh joined him: like the first drops of rain on water weaving a golden stream through the sound of his voice. Entwining them. As if they had never truly been parted at all.

“How about a walk in the garden?” she proposed on a light hum.

The tension in Loki’s his body vanished. He looked to her, nodding his head with no less than that of honored duty as he took up her arm. Laid his hand over hers. As if they were back in Odin’s throne room, escorting her through a crowd at some royal event.

“I would like that very much,” he said.

*****

Loki took a step.

Then another. Then another.

As he moved, solid ground formed beneath him. Like the bleed of ink, color spider-webbed out into the sheer white nothingness. It spread spindly fingers into orange and golden ground and dark brown tree roots, circled to form ponds, swelled into trees that bloomed and finally reached up into an overarching sky, complete with drifting clouds and a sun.

The songs of birds followed, formed into being as Loki thought they should be: filling in the tinier gaps of existence.

A cool breeze.

The sound of trickling water.

The buzzing flight of insects darting through shafts of light.

Soon he and Frigga walked together in the gardens of Asgard. In the full sway of summer, sunlight poured down through a yellow-red canopy of leaves, creating a painting of warm colors around them.

Loki looked at it all with a wonder, drawing more comfort from this familiarity of home than he ever would from of a realm of endless possibility. It struck even more deeply after what felt like an age of battling on foreign planets and cold, unforgiving asteroids. Of being so long confined to the dark.

They walked by a low stone wall that circled one of the ponds. Took up a seat in a patch of shade.

“...then I restored Asgard to all its proper glory,” spoke Loki, retelling to Frigga the events that had led them both to this point. Even after she claimed to know them, she encouraged it, and listened to him speak.

Loki knew it to be for his sake more than hers.

“I cannot wait for you to see it,” he smiled to her, not bothering to conceal a flash of pride. “There’s no trace left of the war upon the entire realm. I even wiped the memory of the battle from the minds of the people, and restored their loved ones to life. Even Heimdall doesn’t suspect a thing! Can you believe it?”

“I can,” Frigga nodded her head. “Very little is beyond the power of the infinity stones.”

“Not even Odin could accomplish so much in his prime!”

There was a shift in the air, and Loki caught the falter in her smile as Frigga turned her eyes away. Looked towards the pond.

Loki ducked his gaze as well.

“It will be as if nothing has changed,” he murmured, wary of raising his voice too loud. Insistant upon the point.

“The Realm Eternal is not immune to change,” said Frigga, smoothing the folds of her dress over her lap in idle distraction. “Though you have endured it more than most.”

“You have not changed,” he said.

Frigga smiled.

“I am as you best remember me,” she said. Then, with a gesture of her hand: “I suppose I could appear to you as I did in my youth, but I doubt you would recognize me.”

“It would…be strange.” Loki made a face.

Frigga laughed.

For awhile they sat in quiet. Frigga returned her eyes to the pond where fish swam lazily in the glimmering shallows. Gentle wind made the trees whisper singsong among themselves. Flower petals dislodged and drifted, fluttering down to the water’s surface where they landed, curled upward in the shape of tiny boats.

Loki watched with her, content in the quiet. Content just to be.

He looked about them, towards the sky, down to the grass around his boots. If he moved his foot, the grass responded, bending beneath his weight. Startled insects took to air in tiny bursts as their wings caught the sunlight.

It felt...real. It did not seem it could all be his subconscious doing, if this realm’s creation subsisted and thrived on his whims.

Then he looked to the gauntlet, gleaming and golden on his hand. Lifting his wrist and turning it in the light, he watched the play of bright colors across the gems where they shone, crystalline and flawless. Their power thrummed a steady tone at the barest edge of his senses, one he could feel, pick out if he strained but a little.

He opened and closed his fingers, reassured by the gauntlet’s solid weight.

“I suppose the only question now,” said Frigga at length, soft and unobtrusive, “is what will you do next?”

Loki closed the gauntlet into a fist. He tightened the line of his jaw.

“I...don’t know,” he said, surprising himself with the words. “I had thought…I’ve spent every waking hour consumed with finding the gems, either to conceal them or collect them. Once I had them, I would rebuild Asgard and rid the galaxy of Thanos and find you. Beyond that…?”

He shook his head, aware of the creep of unending potential drawing near again.

With the gauntlet, he could do whatever he wished. All it took was his own will.

He glanced aside to his mother.

“Perhaps I will simply stay here with you.”

Frigga smiled and patted his hand.

“That will satisfy you for a time,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “But always?”

“In a realm where all is my design?” He smirked. “I’m certain I can find ways for us to remain intrigued.”

“Then you would turn away from everything? From all you set in motion back in Yggdrasil?” There, her voice lowered. “From your brother?”

Loki felt the prick of a guilty blade stab at his heart. He lowered his eyes, the weight of it dragging them back to the level of his boots.

“Is it wrong to want to linger,” he mumbled, “when I’ve finally found a moment’s peace?”

“Not at all, my dearest. But it would be wrong to neglect all else in favor of it.” She gently chided. “You know the responsibility a king must bear.”

“They will be glad to see me gone.” He growled and shook his head, waving one hand in dismissal. “The whole lot of them. No more Loki to trouble them so, and Thor most of all.”

“You know that’s not true.”

Loki leaned forward and scowled at the water of the pond, but Frigga did not coddle him.

“What good is all the power in creation,” her voice chased him through the light and the song of birds, “if it does not help you attain what you truly want?”

“I have what I want,” Loki murmured, his eyes avoidant. “I have you. I have an escape.”

“And Thor?”

Loki shook his head.

“Thor has everything else.”

“Oh, Loki...”

Frigga reached out to touch his head, stroking back his hair once more. Loki tilted into her touch almost automatically, closing his eyes, as a cat would to be stroked.

“Always so perceptive,” her voice hummed, leaving the sentiment unfinished.

She did not have to finish.

Loki remembered like the pronouncing of a sentence the last words she had ever spoken to him in life.

Loki drew the breath to speak – perhaps to change the subject entirely and drag up an apology to lay bare before her, woefully lacking as it felt – when a sound stopped him.

The sound of someone else laughing.

Startled, Loki looked across the pond, to a spread of field just beyond sloping gently down to a line of a river he was quite certain had not been there a moment ago.

Two figures had come into being there, near the water. Two young men.

Loki recognized them.

“What is this?” he whispered to Frigga in a rasped, half-frightened breath.

“Just a memory,” she said, squeezing his hand gently. “It is only you, my dearest.”

Loki stood, and moved slowly around the pond down the slope of field for a better look. Frigga followed, never more than a step behind.

He recognized the scene. Remembered it from his youth. The river that snaked along the foot of the mountains in the wilderness outside Asgard was a place he and Thor had come often as boys. They sought the cool shade and water on hot summer days, and the sport fishing provided late in the season.

He remembered this scene in particular.

A calm scene. Two brothers playing in the water. Until it erupted.

“Now, Loki! Now!”

“I’m trying! Hold it still!”

The bilgesnipe thrashed in the shallow river, tossing waves of water up and over the bank, soaking Thor and Loki both in its cold spray. It was not a fully-grown beast – a juvenile at most – but still Thor could scarcely wrap his arms around the thing’s neck to get a secure hold while Loki conjured a blast of magic between his hands.

He would have blasted it already were the creature not so wriggly that he ran the risk of hitting Thor.

The beast’s long, serpentine body coiled, kicking up water and clawing deep gouges in the muddy river bank. It tossed back its horned head, not yet branched into a more impressive set of antlers, but still hard enough as it butted Thor against his brow.

Fortunately, Thor’s head proved always harder, and he held on tight, gritting his teeth.

Loki spun in the shallows, ducking a swipe of claws and sweep of a barbed tail, then threw out his hands. A few choice words hurled a spell – not a killing spell, but one meant for transport – that struck the beast squarely against its chest.

The bilgesnipe vanished, sent back into the forest depths where it belonged.

Thor and Loki let themselves sag, dripping wet and out of breath.

“You did not slay it?” Thor panted, wiping his brow.

“It was young,” answered Loki.

“But it would have made such a trophy to take back!”

“Not as much as when it’s fully grown.” Loki waved one hand. “Worry not, brother. We will be back once it’s proved itself a proper menace.”

They laughed, and dragged themselves out of the water onto the bank.

It had not been their intent to come out to the river to battle monsters – they had come upon the bilgsnipe by accident, startling it from its feeding – but farmers in the area would be glad for the reprieve in attacks against their flocks until it returned.

The two of them stretched out on the grass in the warm sun, basking as they rested and dried.

Well, Thor stretched out.

Loki remained seated, his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them.

Pretending he didn’t steal glances along Thor’s body as he stretched and folded his hands behind his head.

Whether it be due to a natural course he would have run anyway or some quirk of his Jotun heritage – one he knew about now – Loki had reached his coming of age much earlier than his brother.

He’d loved it then, growing tall and lean, losing the childish plumpness about him that spoke of youth. For once, he was taller than Thor, and had taken full advantage of it in every moment.

But it only lasted a short while, before Thor caught up to him.

Now he was slight again, and nothing in comparison to Thor’s more praiseworthy physique.

Their differences only grew more and more obvious in these outings, year after year.

Beautiful Thor: golden and glistening, drops of water clinging to his hair, caught on the tips of his lashes. The sun brought out a dusting of freckles across his nose and shoulders, his skin a pinker shade than Loki’s for all he could be compared to the sun. (It made it no less true.) Light reflected from the water caught under Thor’s chin and cheeks, highlighting the whole of him in a strangely glowing halo.

This scene was not the first time Loki had noticed and been mesmerized by his brother’s handsomeness. It was but one in a long chain of many.

But that did not lessen their effect.

“The bilgesnipe was fortunate,” said Thor, closing his eyes to rest, perfectly oblivious. “Next time we will not be so merciful.”

Loki smiled a little, setting his chin against his knees.

“ _You_ were fortunate. It nearly cracked your head open.”

“A glancing wound,” Thor huffed. “But a grand story.”

“So you say. Here, let me see…”

Loki reached for him. Thor batted his hand away, insisting upon his wellness.

“Enough, Loki! I’ve taken worse hits in Sif’s sparring sessions.”

“You would not know a wound to your head if it knocked it from your body. Let me see!”

He reached for him again, shifting the posture of his body for better vantage. 

Thor caught his wrists and grinned, promptly rolling him over.

They laughed, delving into an impromptu wrestling match.

They rolled across the bank, the task of overpowering Loki not quite as easy as many would have thought. Thor was strong, but Loki was quick and agile, his body concealing a coiled power he was only too glad to conceal until the moment he struck. Like a snake selecting its prey.

Thor strove to trap him, but a twist and shift of weight, and Loki had Thor pinned beneath him, both his wrists planted into the ground as Loki’s shadow overtook his face.

“Do you yield?” he sneered, even as Thor laughed.

“Very well! I yield! You win.”

They laughed together. Loki continued to hold him down, savoring the victory a moment longer.

Then, slowly, the laughter died.

Something changed in the air as their eyes met. Like the charge of a storm before its first spark.

Loki could not name it any better than that. It was a great sobering in both their expressions, and he suddenly felt very exposed by the low cut of his tunic’s neck. The way it clung to him, heavy and wet.

The way he straddled Thor’s waist between his thighs.

A moment’s awkward silence. A hitch in their breathing. Then there was no way to unknow it.

He felt Thor tense, closing both his trapped hands into fists.

“Loki,” he breathed, in the moment before Loki leaned down and silenced his lips with his own. Kissing him sudden, hurried and anxious, as if to capture the moment before it fled.

Thor arched his neck to return it, slow and gentle. Giving in as the tension in his body melted under Loki’s hold.

The softest of moans between them.

Their very first kiss.

And perfect.

Loki rocked his hips only a little over where he could feel Thor’s beneath him. Felt the bulging swell of the beginnings of Thor’s arousal.

“Loki,” he gasped, dropped his head back limp upon the ground. Wet curls of hair framed his cheek and jawline, smooth where he had not yet grown his beard.

He tipped his head back, quite willing to bare his throat to Loki’s questing teeth and tongue.

“...yes...”

It took no time at all before Loki joined him in his half-nakedness. Then their bodies writhed and rocked together on the ground as the sounds they made carried across the water, swallowed up into the trees of the forest beyond.

The Loki of now stared, reminding himself to breathe.

“That…was not what happened,” he said, his cheeks turning a deep shade of scarlet as he remembered Frigga’s presence.

That was not what had happened at all.

He remembered...

They’d fought the bilgesnipe. They’d rested. They’d returned home that afternoon without further incident, and Loki spent the night in the privacy of his own bed, his hand upon himself as he recalled to mind Thor’s wet skin in the spray of the river water. The damp curl of his hair and the intent behind his blue eyes.

The same as he had every other night.

Frigga nodded her head. Understanding. More than a little knowing.

“Is it what you would have rather happened?” she said.

Loki ducked his face, hiding it behind his gauntleted hand.

With a mental push, the scene of the river dissolved and went away.

“I do not think I should be having this discussion with my mother…”

“Who if not me?” she teased.

Loki was prepared to say no one, though a thought of the Vision flitted through his mind. He already knew of what transpired between himself and Thor when doors were closed at night. But the matter of Thor was Loki’s, and Loki’s alone, and even now he coveted.

And...something else crept upon him. A slow, sickening sense of dread in his gut. One he’d fought to suppress and ignore since first awakening, first seeing her, believing he could be content in ignorance.

He shook his head.

No. No more.

“Are you truly you?” he murmured.

He did not have to look at her to imagine too perfectly the look Frigga would have given him just then. The _real_ Frigga. A moment’s surprise, too quick to her to conceal, then hurt that he would ask such a thing. That he would have ever felt the need to. Then hurt would draw itself back in and harden to resolve as she poised herself like a proper queen, ready to answer. Ready to defend herself even as she understood his doubt.

“I am myself,” she said softly. The slightest bow of her head. “I am the one you sought to return to life.”

“How can that be?” Loki closed his eyes shut tight, furrowing his brow as he thought. It was not a deduction he wanted to make. He should have been glad to have her back at all, real or not, but doubt remained. “If this place is but my wishes and memories, how can you be true? Are you not just another conjured image like the rest?”

“I could be,” she did not deny. “But I’m afraid you will find I am not complacent to all your wishes, if it is proof of my agency you seek.”

He turned to look at her, frowning once more.

“What do you mean?”

Frigga sighed. Her smile had gone. She lowered her eyes, drawing her hands before her to clasp with a show of hesitation.

“Loki,” she said, as if preparing a decree. “I do not wish to return to Asgard.”

For a moment, Loki tried to feign ignorance.

He stared, his jaw slack.

“What?”

The knowing in Frigga’s eyes bordered on pity. He could see the apology in her.

She pressed her lips together tightly.

“Loki... Gods we may be to some, but we are not above a natural order. I lived my life, and it was a wonderful one. I made my choices until the very end, and to alter that would be to alter myself.”

“What are you talking about?” Loki laughed, dismissive, his previous doubts washed away under a flood of new fear. “Natural order? Mother, I weild the infinity stones! I may erase nature and order as I see fit! We can go home together. All will be just as it was before.”

“Oh, Loki.” Briefly she closed her eyes. Shook her head. “I’m afraid it is not that simple.”

“What could be simpler?” Loki gestured both hands to either side of them, sweeping an arc with the gauntlet. “With this, I command all there is. I simply will it, and it is done!”

“And what is the cost?” She stepped forward. Reached out to touch his cheek. Her voice fell like the first breath of spring. “Loki, I love you, and your brother, and my husband, but some things are simply not meant to be.”

“Fate?” Loki said, suddenly bitter, through a tightly clenched jaw. The light of the realm around them began to grow dimmer. “Destiny? Is that the argument you will stand behind?” He reached up to take her hand from his face. Held it clasped inside his own. “Natural order did not rob you from us. That monster did.”

She looked at him levelly, with an air both steadfastly regal and maternally tender.

“You once said that pain was as part of life as all other memories.” She recited Loki’s own words. “You already know that removing it by artificial means takes something precious away.”

Loki could not believe it. He gaped at her, for a moment silent, tears stinging once more in his eyes as a white hot tide of rage threatened to flood free with their breaking.

“I...I can force you...” he stammered, near-choking on his own words. “...I can _will_ you to come back...”

“You can,” Frigga nodded, undeterred. “But that is exactly what it will be: _your_ will. Not mine. Therefore, it will not be truly me. You can create entire worlds with your power now, Loki, but they remain solely your creations. If you do the same to people, their choices and wills are also yours. They will not be themselves.”

She met his eyes.

“Would you keep me at your side for my benefit, or yours?”

Loki choked.

“...mother...!”

He choked, and coughed, his breath suddenly caught in the back of his throat.

His shoulders jerked. His body hitched.

He covered his mouth as something thick and acidic rose in his mouth.

He coughed into his hand, bending double with the force of it.

Then he stared down at his palm in unrelenting horror, watching a thick black stain creep across the lines in his skin. Seeping like blood.

“What is this?” he whispered, as if he’d just given birth to some monstrous thing. Revulsion would have been less at the sight of his own blood.

Frigga reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, Loki...”

He shook her off, a sudden violence and bristling in his posture.

“What is this?” he snapped again, throwing out his hand to splatter the black taint across the ground. “More of Odin’s treachery?”

“It is not that.”

“Is it not?” Loki snarled, spitting more black from his mouth. “No. This is wrong! I kept my side of our arrangement. I protected Asgard. I restored it!”

“Loki, that’s not—”

“Is Odin truly so eager to be rid of me?”

“Loki, please.” Frigga stepped close as Loki retreated, turning his back to her. “It is not what you think.”

“You knew?” He rounded on her, eyes alight with the return of fury. “You _knew_...?”

“I know enough to know you are quick to believe the worst of people.” She met his gaze evenly. “And that your father had always the best intentions, no matter his actions. Just as you did.”

“The best of intentions? He would have _executed_ me were it not for you! He spoke the words himself!”

“There is more to this than you yet realize—”

“Of course there is. Of course! Odin was the forked tongue long before I ever inherited that title.”

“Loki...”

Loki bent double once more as a coughing fit seized him. Frigga went to him, her hands on his shoulders. He shoved her away with one sweep of his arm as power from the gauntlet glowed.

Loki laughed, broken and jagged, finding a new delight and revelry in closing his hand around the black sickness he spit up. Watching it as it slid through his fingers.

“I always imagined Odin would not be content to let me go unpunished,” he rasped, babbling. “Of course he wouldn’t! He would never sit idle and allow me to succeed where he could not, even if I am a better king than he ever was!”

“Loki—!”

“ _No!_ ” Loki flexed the gauntlet’s power, shattering the world around them. Black taint seeped from between his lips while he bristled with the gems’ radiance, brighter and hotter, as if to burn it out of himself.

The light in his eyes was madness.

“I will not be denied!” he screamed at her, making her cringe before his power.

His grin split his lips until they bled.

“I will do as you suggested, mother, and seek my own satisfaction. I will _take_ what I want.”

“Loki,” Frigga intoned a warning. “Do not do this.”

Loki didn’t listen. He raved.

“It is in my power! Not Odin, nor the Avengers, or the Norns can stop me!”

Frigga called his name, but Loki had already gone, sundering the world behind him with a laugh and a crack like thunder.

*****

Loki ran.

He ran through space and time. He ran through the layers of existence that parted before him like water. He passed through realities as easily as leafing through pages in a book, flitting across words and illustrations until he found what he sought.

All the while, the power of the infinity stones throbbed through his blood. The gems of the gauntlet glowed on his hand: a light to guide the way.

He found another reality. One where things had turned out differently.

One where Thor loved him openly and freely – one where he always had – and lived in his thrall and obeyed his every word and command.

“Loki…”

Thor’s voice, low and heated. Ready in Loki’s bed. His eyes dark with need as he waited for him, looking up through a fall of touseled hair.

“Please…”

Loki shook his head at the sight, recoiling.

“No.”

He clenched his eyes shut. Smacked at the image as if to bat it away.

“No, this isn’t right…this isn’t right!”

Thor continued to look to him, worshipful and obediant – like a mindless marionette of himself – all his body and posture awaiting command.

“Loki,” he spoke again, pleading. “Please...have me...”

Loki took hold of both sides of his face, grasping and digging his fingers into Thor’s skin as if to tear, shouting frustration.

“You never lie back and simply do as you’re told…!”

Thor just smiled, his gaze soft. Loving.

Loki shook him.

“Fight me,” he hissed. “Argue with me! Be infuriating and brash and impulsive! Counter me in ways I have not anticipated!”

“I love you,” said Thor.

Loki shoved him away, an inarticulate scream tearing free from his throat.

That was not Thor.

He left that reality, blasting it behind him.

He crafted a new one of his own. One where all remained the same, save for one small change.

His victory over Jotunheim.

Loki stood on the Bifrost and watched as the blast ripped across the cosmos, wind tugging at his cloak and hair.

Jotunheim destroyed, torn to pieces. Left a broken shell of a world floating in the dust of its own debris.

An entire race of monsters gone, taking that part of himself he so hated with them.

And yet, it felt a hollow victory. An unsatisfying taste in the back of Loki’s throat as he swallowed, watching the red and greens and yellows of the nova fluctuate.

He looked down to the gauntlet on his hand, its gems radiant against the dark background of space.

He had moved beyond such things. There was so much _more_ to be done. So much to be accomplished besides the fate of one petty planet.

It no longer felt important, as it once had.

Loki returned to the reality he’d left, destroying his creations behind him, and bending double as he coughed more and more black bile.

“This isn’t right,” he rasped, speaking to Odin, who remained absent. “I did all you said. I restored Asgard! I upheld our bargain!”

Odin did not answer. Not even Huginn and Muninn could keep up with him now.

Loki snarled, and flexed the power of the gauntlet to reach out through the realms to rip Odin from his rest. He would _force_ the old man to face him, to acknowledge him and everything he’d done. If he continued to refuse, Loki would shred the whole of his being and scatter his atoms to the furthest reaches of the galaxy...

He no longer felt any compunction in doing so.

Then, Loki stopped.

He had come upon another scene…one he hadn’t sought out, but one in which he’d landed, perhaps drawn by the familiar line of Thor’s travels. Felt a spark of importance there.

It was a common, mundane setting. A household on Earth.

Thor lounged on a rooftop under a lightly overcast sky. A light smile hovered upon his features. Relaxed. At ease.

The dark sky contrasting his hair and eyes only served to make them that much more striking. The warm wind and promise of an approaching storm complimentary to his every feature.

Loki sighed, reminded of what it was to feel a pang of longing.

But... _she_ was there too.

That woman.

The human.

They were speaking, voices quiet and calm. Smiling gently. Jane held a cup of steaming drink in her hands.

Loki slipped closer, unseen, to hear.

“…with all that data I brought back from Tromso,” she said, blowing on the surface of her drink before taking a sip. “It’ll be a great opportunity.”

Thor nodded.

He stood apart from her. Facing. His back to the rooftop’s edge. Hands clasped in front of him.

“That is wonderful,” he said, voice dipping with sincerity. “You will do great work.”

“Yeah. I think so too. You guys sure have given us plenty to work with.” She laughed. “Figuring out the physics of the Bifrost will keep us busy for at least the next twenty years.”

“If there is any way in which I can help, you need only ask.”

“I will. You know. If you’re around.”

“I plan to return often,” Thor smiled. “Anthony Stark has given me a place to reside in his new tower.” There he chuckled. “He seems to think he has done well, impressing a royal from Asgard with his living quarters.”

They both laughed. The sound carried together on the wind, swirling across the city’s rooftops.

Loki scowled where he hid, ready to dash the scene to pieces as he had done the rest.

But he stayed his hand, watching the way Thor’s eyes lowered to the ground. The way he shifted his boots in time with his thoughts.

Loki narrowed his eyes.

Something was...different.

“Well, if you ever need to find me,” said Jane, tucking a lock of hair blown loose by the wind back behind her ear. “I’ll be here. They’re going to set me up with a lab here in London so I don’t have to relocate. Since Greenwich is so close, I figured that was best.”

“It was the site of the convergence,” Thor agreed.

“And it will keep Richard from freaking out over the distance. He already has enough insecurities. Keeps making jokes about living up to your example.”

Thor’s smile faded. For a moment, he looked to her, gravely serious.

“Are you...happy?”

Jane turned her eyes aside, lowering them half-lidded. She cupped her hands around her drink and lifted it to her lips, sipping the steaming liquid in slow consideration.

“Yeah,” she said quietly in answer. “Yeah. I am. I think...I think it could work.”

Only then did Thor smile again.

“Then I am happy for you.”

He reached out his hand. Took hers into it. His palm nearly swallowed her own, tiny in comparison, as he closed his fingers gently around her, and lifted to kiss near her wrist.

“You deserve everything, Jane Foster,” he spoke with reverence, looking to her as she blushed. “You deserve someone who can give it to you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m still glad I met you. It was...well, it was exhausting and terrifying, really. There were a few times I was pretty sure I wasn’t gonna make it out alive. But...it was fun, too.” She smiled, squeezing his hand. “I’m glad we can still be friends.”

Thor bowed his head.

“Also you totally owe me another Bifrost ride. I wanna do that again.”

Thor laughed.

“Of course. I will always be ready to come to your aid, should you ever require it.”

He straightened.

“And, if you’re not otherwise occupied, perhaps a visit to Isabel’s diner soon for more coffee?”

“I’d love that! Wouldn’t even have to buy a plane ticket. We’ll just have to work on communication, yeah? I don’t know if you can get a Gmail account in Asgard...”

They laughed, and talked of more things, but Loki scarcely listened.

The way they spoke.

The way they embraced before parting...

It was not the way of lovers.

Loki turned away, and looked to the timestream. Flexing the gauntlet’s power, he could all but see the threads of continuity weaving themselves around him. Time and cause and connection, flowing forever in countless directions, interconnecting on a web so infinite no single pair of eyes could possibly comprehend.

Except his.

He snatched one thread in particular, examining it closely, placing this scene in his awareness.

This...

This happened before he’d begun to haunt Thor in his sleep.

Before Loki had given Thor any indication he was still alive.

It must have happened on one of Thor’s many visits back to Earth. Those times interim while Loki was busy with matters of their own realm.

Thor had parted ways with this woman?

Why?

Why had he not told him? Thor could have only thought such news would please Odin.

Why hadn’t Loki _known?_

Loki left that scene behind him, racing back into the timestream with no real destination in mind, only that he had to get away...

*****

Loki saw a great many things.

He saw himself, standing resolute in his cell, his look one of sly, confident arrogance as he watched with deep satisfaction the Kursed turn away to stalk through the dark Asgardian halls, guided by his directions to the location of the shield generator which protected all of the citadel.

He’d been so proud of himself then, savoring the taste of revenge against his captors.

Loki slammed both his fists against the cell’s glowing walls, their light flaring enough to blind even as he refused to flinch against it.

“ _Wretch!_ ” he shrieked. “Her death is on you! None of this would have happened were it not for _you!_ ”

He slammed his fists against the wall once more, so hard it shattered.

The entire scene shattered.

*****

He saw himself on a barren, distant asteroid, refusing to kneel before Thanos on his elevated throne.

Being handed the scepter once Thanos deemed he was worthy.

Loki so desperate for acceptance that he willingly donned those chains.

*****

He walked through the cold and dark of Jotunheim, over a landscape of battle.

Bodies of frost giants and Asgardians alike lay strewn upon the snow, great swaths of frozen blood mixing with pools of red.

In the distance, framed by a faraway sun, was the giant monolith of a temple.

The temple had not been a place of warriors. It had been a gathering of the weak. The young. Those who sought shelter from the battle while the more capable went out to fight.

Odin attacked it anyway, knowing it would draw Laufey to him.

Perhaps even knowing the Jotun king had family inside.

Odin slaughtered them, and Loki stood by, untouched in the snow, as he watched the Allfather lift a tiny child in his hands that had somehow escaped the destruction. A frost giant runt.

Lift him, caress its bald head, and smile.

Loki’s hands closed into fists at his sides as he felt the formation of ice crystals run through his blood.

What would happen, he wondered, if he killed Odin here and now, and let events otherwise play out as they would?

What would happen if he killed his infant self?

The possibilities ran before his mind’s eye at a whirlwind pace. He could scarcely keep up.

Endless changes. Endless outcomes. Endless effects that rested on something as small as a word. A gesture. Loki could see the fabric of time and the edgeless tapestry it wove, each thread running its course, connected to countless others to form a more grand design. Pulling on one dislodged so many others, just as they could be tied and reformed again. He could sculpt them like clay. Tie and retie knots. Change the colors. He could set the whole thing ablaze...

His mind felt on fire from so much potential.

Loki grabbed his head, screaming into the nothing. Frustration and desire and ambition and endless want pounding on the walls of his skull. Threatening to shatter it.

In all the chaos and creation, he sought something small. Something simple.

Something concrete he could hold onto.

He dropped to his knees, shoving away all reality, sending it far away from him, until he was alone again in a great white nothing.

He buckled forward, holding his aching head, rocking as he whimpered and sobbed and strove to endure the pain.

Gradually, it faded.

Then it was quiet.

But...he was not alone.

Loki lifted his head, a sharp gasp escaping him. He did not move, poised and tense as a rabbit about to bolt, as he slowly turned his eyes around the figures that surrounded him: dark silhouettes slowly coming into focus in the midst of nothing. Like a hall of pillars.

They were...varied. In dress and manner and appearance no two were alike, and yet...something bound them together. A common thread linking one to the next. Small consistancies Loki could pinpoint as they drew nearer to his awareness.

Dark hair.

Sharp green eyes.

A quirk in the mouth that hinted at great and terrible doings.

Loki lowered his hands slowly, though he kept the gauntlet’s power near, reassured by its presence.

“What is this?” he hissed. Words he had been repeating often of late.

“We’re you,” said one of them, gesturing one hand about them. “All of us. All possibilities.”

“Well, some of us are inevitabilities,” another drawled.

Loki darted his glare to them all, slowly regathering himself. Positioning his feet beneath him to stand, though not too quickly.

“Phantoms from other realities come to chase me down?” he sneered. “Go back to your own wretched ends of the universe. I do not have the interest to waste on you.”

“Oh, we’re not from other realities,” one of them said, a slick youth who carried himself with a swaggering confidence, clad in a long green coat and horned crown. “Not all of us, anyway. Some of us are just further on down the line.”

He smirked and tilted up his chin, crossing his arms over his chest.

Loki wrinkled his nose.

“Aren’t your horns rather small?”

That satisfactorily threw him off.

“What’s wrong with small?” piped a child – a brat – who ducked to hide behind one of the others when Loki turned to glare at him. He leaned out only far enough into view to stick out his tongue and make a rude gesture Loki’s way. “You’re small!”

A magpie perched on his shoulder.

Loki glared, though not half so hard as at the one the brat chose to use as cover: another youth, somehow a cleaner version of himself, wearing green, gold, and white, on his brow a winged circlet that felt a pathetic mockery of Thor’s own helm.

“White pants?” Loki snarled, indignity heaped upon insult. “Really?”

The youth only blinked, gaping rather dumbly.

“Uhh...”

“Begone, all of you!” Loki swept his arm in an arc. “I have not the time nor the patience to put you all in your pla—”

He choked mid-word, coughing again. A failed attempt to cover his mouth and conceal the black spittle.

“In our place?” finished another version of himself, this one female. She jabbed a finger against his chest, undaunted. “Our place is in here, trickster. We’re part of you.”

“Though can’t say I’d be all that sorry to see you implode, either,” said the swaggering one, blowing loose hair from his eyes. “With that power you’re carrying around. It’s about what you deserve.”

Loki glared. Wiped his mouth as he snarled.

“If I die, then so do all of you.”

“Not really,” said the woman. “We’ll still exist. Somewhere. Sometime.” She spread her hands. “That’s the nature of stories.”

“You just can’t help yourself,” said the brat. “You play with fire, you burn!”

He blew a raspberry.

“You’re all only fragments of me!” Loki shrieked. “I am me! I am whole! You are only reflections!”

“Really?” The swaggering youth arched a dubious eyebrow. “Then how come you’re the one that feels broken?”

Loki roared. He flexed the power of the gauntlet out in all directions, sending a shockwave through the nothing that obliterated the standing pillars of judgement around him. Silenced the voices that would mock him.

Only the one in white looked back at him with something like reproach.

Loki spat after him.

The power was taxing. Loki fell to his knees again in the wake of it, weight braced forward on his hands. He coughed and panted, drained, head hanging as he spit up more black and weakly wiped his mouth.

One figure remained.

Loki saw it come into focus slowly, gradually. Its bare feet entered in his field of vision first: their color a dark cerulean blue. Lean and wiry. If he looked up, he could see ceremonial decorations. Royal trappings and dress. Darker blue lines and raised markings of heritage running across its skin like veins.

He ducked his eyes down and away before he saw too much, clenching them shut against the knowledge of what he knew was there.

“Every facet of a gem believes itself to be the face,” said a voice like cracking ice. “They are no less the same stone.”

“Be gone, monster,” Loki hissed. “Wither and die as you were meant to...”

Another gesture, and his Jotun self swirled away into nothing.

Loki was alone again with his thoughts.

But that...that was enough.

His brain was on fire. It burned down the back of his throat like a sickness.

His thoughts were flame, searing through his blood.

Again he became unmoored in a realm of endless possibilities. They surrounded him. Choking potential, clogging chance, slowing his blood to molasses with indecision.

He could not breathe for the chaos, and he could feel it dragging him down.

Down...down...

Heavy with the weight of power. The weight of worlds.

Like drowning.

He tried to reach out. Tried to claw his way back up to solidity, back to clarity and definition, but his hands could find no purchase. Nowhere to grip. The weight of the gauntlet made it near impossible to lift his hand.

He tried to cry out, but potential flooded into his mouth. Choking on possibility.

Loki closed his eyes, bracing himself for what he knew would happen next.

He would dissolve himself: lost forever to distinction. He would not remain even a speck on an infinite scale of what could be.

That was, perhaps, what he mourned most deeply. What struck sore and true against his heart. The loss of his own identity.

But what could he do? The gauntlet was being smothered under its own power.

No. Not the gauntlet.

Just him.

He had done this. He had created this.

Now, there was no stopping it.

Loki surrendered, no longer possessing the strength to resist oblivion.

This was the end. He had lost.

Dissolution closed in.

Then a hand reached down, shattering the nothingness into broken shards under a sundering power of resolve and conviction. Cracks of non-reality splintered and broke, allowing the life-affirming firmness of certainty to spill over.

A strong hand grabbed onto Loki’s below his wrist. Clamped on.

So shocked was Loki he hadn’t the presence of mind to resist.

He reached back. Held on. Closed both his hands around that promising wrist and refused to let go.

A strength beyond the scope of mortality pulled him up. Back into existence.

Thor’s eyes were the first thing to meet him through the break, as Loki lifted his head. In those eyes was the will of worlds.

“I will _not_ let you fall again,” he said, warm breath like life puffing against Loki’s jaw, slack in astonishment.

They fell back together onto the solidity of the Bifrost, a tangle of limbs and panting.


	7. Bear Us Toward Our Noble Purpose

_“You are my brother, and my friend...”_

_“...no more than another stolen relic...”_

_“...never wanted the throne...”_

_“I said...”_

_“...didn’t do it for him...”_

_“...sometimes I’m envious...”_

_“...glorious purpose...”_

_“...KNEEL!”_

_“Burn in Hel, monster.”_

_“...but never doubt that I love you...”_

*****

When next Loki became aware, it was to the sensation he was being held.

He was warm. Something sturdy braced across his back. His arms had drawn in close to himself as had his knees. He rested, curled like an infant against the strong chest that cradled him, a voice reverberant in his bones each time it spoke his name.

“Loki... _Loki...!_ ”

Loki opened his eyes slowly, flinching. Frowning with great distaste. He was awakened far too soon for his liking.

He saw stars above, holding their familiar patterns. Asgard lined the horizon in the distance, real and glittering. The glow of the Bifrost underlit Thor’s worried expression where it hovered above him, his eyes so bright. Hair loosened from its usual braiding brushed across his face in a warm wind. Lines of care lay dark upon his brow.

“Loki,” he gasped again, a sound encouraged, as Loki’s eyes fluttered shut.

“Nnnnghn,” Loki groaned, sensation all at once returning to his body. Everything ached.

“Loki...”

Thor pulled him close, his arms around him clamped tight into a firm hold. Supporting Loki’s shoulders and neck as Loki groaned again, winced and tightened. His hand pressed weakly against Thor’s chest as if to push him away. Those same fingers curled in to the leather coating rough armor. They held on as he coughed, braced by the strength in Thor’s solid grip.

“Loki,” Thor breathed, his voice frantic with a loss of knowing what else to do. “Hold on! Hold on...”

“Let me go,” Loki rasped, pushing against him in vain. He barely moved.

“No.” If anything, Thor held him tighter. Loki felt him bend. Felt the press of lips into his hair. Felt the tightening in Thor’s shoulders as they tensed. Eased. Heard a catch of breath. “I will not. I will _not_ lose you again.”

Loki pushed at him a little harder.

“Let me go!”

“No.”

“Thor—!” Loki choked, coughed, straining as far as Thor’s hold would allow as his insides bent double in an attempt to seize upon themselves. Still, Thor refused to release him. He held him, propped to his chest, his grip stern as if to stave off whatever attack made Loki heave so. As if that would stop his shaking.

The fit passed, and Loki eased, resting against him as he caught his breath. He no longer had the energy to fight.

“Loki—” Thor began again.

“Don’t.” Loki snapped, summoning into his voice the resistance he could no longer manage in his body. “Do not speak to me.”

“I will speak,” Thor growled. “And you will listen. Loki… _enough_. Enough of this madness. You do not have to carry on with this…this foolishness! I know what you have done. I know what you would yet do. Please, confide in me! If it is judgement you fear then fear not. Lay your doubts to rest. Or, if you will not believe me in this, give me a test that I may prove myself—”

“Thor,” Loki croaked.

“—anything! Only name it! I will stand by you if you only trust me! I know what has happened. The Vision…he told me. Oh, cling not to this poison! Already you have ruled Asgard for a time and proven yourself fit—”

“Thor,” Loki croaked again, with rapidly growing irritation.

“—is that not enough? If it is rule you seek then you have my pledged and undying loyalty. You had it even before this trial began. But I beg you! Call off this search for power! You’ve done enough…you’ve done so much…”

“Thor,” Loki growled, and made a deliberate cough.

“There is no need for you to reach any longer for those stars that would burn you upon their grasp. You are enough! If you cannot bear this burden alone then let me lend my strength. Let me carry you! I love you, Loki—!”

_“Thor!”_

Thor at last fell silent, blinking down at Loki in a wonder. Loki clenched a fistful of his cloak, wrenching it tight as though that would coil its edge about Thor’s neck and rob him of the ability to speak for at least a moment.

“Thor, I am dying,” Loki said, his words the hard, flinty pronunciation as if explaining something to a very small child. “If you do not _mind_ , I would prefer my last moments not to be filled with your ceaseless prattling and desperate pleas for reconciliation. I do believe I have suffered enough.”

His words tasted of iron shavings. Loki could feel the black spittle dry and harden at the corners of his lips. Still, Thor looked down at him with a face soft and beaming with an unrestrained love. Affection and remorse and pity lit in his eyes, their reaching gaze deepest reflections of the rippling colors of the Bifrost. So open and earnest and bared in naked exposure. Loki tried not to see it. Tried to turn his face away and twist in his hold that he was better facing anywhere else, but Thor held him. Loki could have fallen into that look, lost himself, though as it was he would have preferred to smack Thor off the edge of the bridge, had he the energy.

“Oh, Loki,” said Thor. His voice cracked on the verge of tears. “ _Loki…_ ”

He bent forward, tightening his hold about Loki for a deeper embrace. Loki’s eyes bulged and he hissed a silent shriek through his teeth as he scrambled to push away. The way a cat might that did not want to be held.

_“What part of dying do you not understand?!”_

“I’m sorry!” Thor released him, pulling back his hands. The pressure eased on Loki’s insides and he lurched forward, curling onto his side as the pain on pressed innards eased. Still, it ignited another fit of coughs and Loki spit whatever he dislodged: vile black stains landing on the Bifrost’s gleaming surface.

Thor hovered nearby, speaking Loki’s name as if to anchor him there.

“Loki…”

“Thor. If you say my name one more time I swear to the _Norns_ …” Loki laughed. A harsh, ragged sound as he wheezed to catch his breath. Perhaps that was not the best oath to make. “I’m dying!”

“No,” said Thor, shaking his head. “You are not.”

“Oh yes. I am.” Loki laughed, at last raising his head to see him. Weak, and without energy. “Can you believe it?”

“No. I do not believe it.” Thor reached for his arm. “No more tricks, Loki. You won’t fool me again.”

“No…no, of course not.”

Loki let himself be handled. Let himself be drawn up to sit that he and Thor faced properly. Thor’s hand cupped his face, lifted his head when Loki no longer felt the strength to hold it up himself. Thor’s hand felt rough and warm, his fingers pressing along the line of his cheek with a warrior’s certainty. Loki closed his eyes to it, humming low in his throat as he enjoyed the sensation. Let himself savor this one small luxury.

“Loki…”

“What did I tell you?” Loki shook his head. Cleared his throat. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. Asgard is safe. The galaxy has little more to fear from me.”

“Do not speak of such things,” Thor growled, leaning close. “You will be alright. Mother will be here soon. She…she will know what to do.”

“Doesn’t she always.” Loki half-laughed and closed his eyes, smiling faintly. He could feel the tension grow more rigid in Thor’s body. He all but shook him to keep his eyes open. “How did you find me?”

“The Vision…he helped track the stones. He told me what you had planned all this time. And mother, she…she knew how to follow you…oh, _Loki_ …”

Thor crowded in to embrace him again. This time, Loki did not protest. He lay against him, closing his eyes, finding a comfort in his warmth. His hands dropped to his side and he allowed Thor to support his weight.

“You may continue your speech,” he murmured against Thor’s shoulder. “If it will make you feel better.”

He heard Thor’s voice break. He imagined he was weeping.

“It’s this thing,” he growled, a surge of anger and childish blame. “This… _thing_ …has been the cause of all this from the start. It has poisoned you. You need only be rid of it…”

He reached for the gauntlet on Loki’s hand.

_“No!”_

Loki recoiled, not for escape, but to brace just as Thor did against the surge of power that erupted from the gems. Like a shockwave it burst, rippling outward and shaking the Bifrost to its foundation; a sound not unlike when Loki had destroyed the Bifrost before echoed over the distant cityscape of Asgard.

Thor and Loki held each other as they waited for it to pass. Thor planted Mjolnir’s head to the bridge’s structure beneath them, letting her be their grounding.

Gradually, it quieted. The wind died.

“Clearly you learned nothing from the Tesseract,” Loki grumbled.

“I’m sorry,” Thor whispered.

“I am not. I’m not sorry for any of it.” Loki’s chin rested on Thor’s shoulder and he looked beyond the tangled mess of his hair to the Bifrost’s edge. Stars gleamed there as they always had, settled in and around colored nebulae. For the first time in a long while, they looked distant. “I brought her back, Thor. I did what the Norns would not. I reached…I grasped…for once, I grabbed onto something I wanted…something I wanted just for me. For no other reason. I saved Asgard. I found mother. I even found you, for a moment…”

“You always had me,” said Thor.

Loki laughed. Quiet. Without energy.

“No I didn’t. As you said: I reached for stars. You were one of them, Thor. Far away and above my grasp, but always bright. Constant in your shining. Warming other worlds. I could never reach you.”

“Even stars may fall.” Thor clutched him again, briefly tighter. His voice catching. “Oh, Loki, why did you not trust me? I would have helped you, if you’d but spoken. You did not have to carry out all this on your own.”

“Would you have let me steal the gems?”

“Well, no…”

“Then, there you have it.”

Thor pushed him back to arm’s length, hands at his shoulders. Their eyes met, Loki’s tired and half-lidded while Thor’s searched. An ever brighter stab of blue, framed by tears.

“But I would have stood at your side, whatever happened.”

The side of Loki’s mouth pulled. He looked at him levelly.

“Even now you say that. Even now. After everything…”

“Yes.”

Loki shook his head.

“If you had spoken but a bit sooner…”

Thor’s eyes flickered downward. His fingers dug into Loki’s shoulders where he held them. Loki raised his hand that was not weighed down by the gauntlet – he could no longer lift it – and let his fingers curl loosely about Thor’s wrist, hanging on. Long fingers barely disturbing the cloth that cushioned his bracers.

“Loki,” said Thor, with an effort. “There is something I should tell you. About Jane.”

“Yes, Thor,” Loki hummed. “I already know.”

Thor’s head snapped up.

“…you know?”

“Oh yes.” Loki tipped up his chin, glad to draw at least some final amusement in the look on Thor’s face, if this was to be his end. Seeing him shocked never failed to please. “I saw it. I know everything.”

“Then you know where my heart truly lies…”

“Do I? Or is it the gems’ doing?”

“I made that decision long before Thanos attacked.”

Loki gave him a weak kick.

“Idiot! Why did you not say anything?”

“Well,” Thor floundered, briefly a boy again. “You were dead? But Jane deserves all, which I could not give her. I would rather spend an eternity alone than do either of you a disservice.”

“Of all the arrogant…! Presumptuous…! Short-sighted…! Egotistical…! Dullard…!”

Thor pulled him forward back into his arms. Loki’s insults still came, muffled against his chest, but Thor held him. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to his hair, breathed in the scent of magic about his person. The vile taste in his mouth like rot and decay that wafted from his skin. But he did not waver. He spoke to him instead, insistent that Loki would hear.

“I would have us be as we were before,” he said, gradually quieting Loki’s spurs. “I love you, Loki. I love you. I can speak it no more plain than that. I have seen what you have done for the good of Asgard – I can see it as plainly as anyone – and I shall defend your name against those who would accuse otherwise. Oh, _Loki_ , please! Find some way to slip this fate! Be clever once again! I care not by what trick or price it may be, but…come home with me! You have my love! You have my bed. You have all of me. Is that in any way enough? Confide in me. Tell me your heart. Tell me your thoughts. Your desires. Tell me what it is you want and I shall grant it! If this is to be our parting…I…I only want to _know_. If that can somehow redeem me from years of ignorance and blindness…please, Loki…”

“What I want?” Loki drew back, far enough to place his hand on Thor’s face. To touch and frame his beautiful perfection for the moment he took to look into his eyes, not in acknowledgement, but just to see him. To smile at Thor so willingly and completely bared to his mercy.

Loki drew a single finger down his cheek.

“I suppose…what I want…the only way I can imagine in which you could possibly repay me, if that is your wish…is this.” He drew close to his lips, speaking just against them. “Here. I give you all my love. All I possess. Now…” He licked his lips, dry and cracked. “I want you here. Now. With me. That I can watch your face as it all slips away from you.”

“Loki! Brother…!”

Loki’s hand dropped away from him. Fell limp to his side.

“I am not your brother.”

Thor gripped him. All but shook with the violence of his grief.

“You are. You are! And so much more…”

They leaned in towards each other. Loki held his breath, unaware of how his heart pounded until he felt it in his own ears.

Their lips were going to touch…

…and then, a voice.

“Ah. There they are.”

Both Thor and Loki looked aside, the first with a blinking surprise and the second with an increasing twitch about his brow, as a gold cape fluttered on an undetectable breeze and the Vision floated down to touch his feet on the Bifrost.

Frigga appeared beside him. Or…perhaps…she had been there the entire time. Neither Thor nor Loki recalled noticing her approach, yet she stood with her hands folded, smiling at them gently. Knowingly.

“You truly need to cease this habit,” Loki scowled.

“What habit is that?” Vision asked with a tilt of his head.

“Appearing uninvited, and at the worst possible moment.”

“Loki,” Frigga chided, with no loss of her smile. She stepped close and knelt down beside him, the brush of her dress sprinkling golden ripples across the surface of the Bifrost. Like tried to sit up, to better support himself, but the movement caused pain to ignite again through his insides. Threatened to send him into another fit of coughs. He remained leaning on Thor, though the aid Thor offered had suddenly become very lax.

Thor was not looking at him.

He was looking at Frigga.

“Hello, Thor.” The sound of her voice brought a light to him that was more than what radiated from the bridge. Thor did not answer, but he stared, his jaw slack and eyes wide. Dumbstruck, he could scarcely even move when Frigga reached out her hand and cupped his cheek. Stroked her fingers back along his beard and into his hair, tucking it away from his face.

“I missed you,” she said.

Thor grasped her hand, awakening from his stupor for that one single gesture, holding her palm against him as if in fear she would slip away. Again. Loki could only imagine they made quite the pretty picture: the three of them, kneeling together, as close as any family. Thor in his armor and cloak. Frigga in all her regal finery. The Vision watching over them like some ancestral spirit guardian. Only Loki looked a mess.

It was, Loki realized, with some clench in his heart, the first time the three of them had been together since…well, since before Jotunheim. At Thor’s coronation.

“Well, mother,” Loki coughed, when it seemed no one else would speak first. “It seems I returned your soul for nothing.”

“You know that’s not true.” Frigga looked to him, her lips pursed in a manner of motherly disapproval. “I am glad to be returned. Even if only for a moment. To touch both of you again.” Her hand fell to Loki’s cheek as well, completing a circle between the three of them. She leaned in, tugging them both close, to form as best a hug as she could. “My sons.”

“Mother,” Thor finally managed, still staggered. “I am so sorry—”

Frigga shook her head.

“Shh, Thor. There is no blame. Only choice. I made mine, and now your brother must make his.”

“What choice?” Loki hissed. “Odin has left me little.”

“It was not your father’s doing that has made you ill, Loki. It is your own.”

“…what?”

Loki curled in, tightening on himself, the better to steel against another round of coughs. All that kept him from his usual protestations of Odin not being his father.

Frigga leaned in close, holding him every bit as much as Thor.

“So much power, Loki.” A look of pain creased her face. She touched their brows together. “You sought so much so quickly in your doings. Did you truly think there would be no consequences?”

Loki did not quite have a proper response for that.

“Err…well…”

“You pushed yourself too far, and too harshly. This taint you suffer comes from the amount of power your body cannot hold. Release it, and you will heal.”

“But—”

“Loki,” said Thor, joining his mother’s side. The look in his eyes one of pleading. “You have been strong enough already.”

“You don’t understand!” Loki all but squalled like an infant. “I _have_ to do this!”

“Then let me help?”

Loki looked at the faces around him. He looked at how they looked at him. Thor with blatant fear written across the lines of his face, somehow duller and less prominent than the hope that shone bright in his eyes. Frigga with her quieter and more suppressed care. Better masked under a calm dignity and control. The Vision with his complacent acceptance, passing no judgement, though curiosity prevailed. Loki looked at them all, and wondered – if by any means or stretch of his power – if he could give himself to these three guardians of fate instead. Let them be his Norns.

“Loki,” soothed Frigga, stroking his hair.

Perhaps the thought summoned them. A ripple in the air like a curl of fabric displaced the stars above them, making their light waver. Then they appeared: goat, wolf, and raven-headed, hovering just to the level of where Loki could raise his eyes.

He scowled at them.

“Little Laufeyson…” came the chorus of voices.

“Norns,” gasped Thor, instantly tightening.

“What do you want?” Loki sneered, unknowingly leaning more upon Thor for support. “Come for the gems after all?”

“We come...” said the three.

“...only to see...”

“...what decision you make.”

“Do you not know already?” Loki tossed his good hand in a gesture. “Why waste the trip? Was this not all foreseen by you since before time began?”

Three heads bowed.

“Our sight is clouded in this,” they confessed, with some sound of reluctance.

“It has been long and rare since we could not see.”

“You hold the power to change fate.”

“We would know how it ends.”

“Nothing ever ends,” said Vision, low and even. He looked up to the Norns without fear. “Not truly.”

“We know that power binds. It does not free.”

“You have been bound by this power since before you grasped it.”

“It is not the freedom you seek.”

Loki growled. “It gave me freedom enough to escape Odin’s sentence.”

“Odin did not sentence you to die, Loki,” said Frigga, grasping his hand. “Your indulgence of power has done that.”

“Then what is his condition? He would not let me rule Asgard unchecked.”

Frigga nodded, unflinching before his accusations.

“That decision lies with Thor.”

Again, Loki faltered.

“…what?”

“It has all along.”

All eyes turned to Thor.

Thor blinked, then stared back at them. He made a flat, unsure sound in the back of his throat.

Frigga shook her head. She almost laughed. “Loki, you are more like your father than either of you would ever be willing to admit. Of course he knew the lure of power would prove too tempting, just as he knew your skills and abilities would be able to save Asgard in a way he could not. But only one thing could save you from yourself.”

Loki stared. When he spoke, his voice came sluggish. Low. Carrying the weight of certainty. “...Thor.”

Frigga smiled. The tears in her eyes were proud, and loving. She squeezed Loki’s hand close to her chest.

“Odin’s only condition to your rule is that Thor allow it. The power rests with him. If he decides you are worthy—”

“Yes,” said Thor, suddenly. With no hesitation.

Loki stared at him, his jaw long since grown slack. The greater part of his pride did not want to allow such a thing the chance to be true, yet it slotted into the parts of his mind that had glossed over such a possibility before – he had never even conceived of it – and nothing else in all the Realms could have fit more appropriately. Of course Odin would have schemed such a thing. Of course it was the last notion Loki would have considered himself. It made sense, in every logical, practical, and poetic way.

He hated and admired Odin for it.

“Power binds...” said the Norns, voices echoing upon each other in ghostly harmony.

“...the fates of all...”

“...just as they are bound by it.”

“Alright. Alright!” Loki waved his good hand. Clenched his eyes shut and shook his head as best he could. “Enough! I’m tired...I’m so tired...of listening to all of this.” He looked down at the gauntlet, the inset gems still radiant with the interconnected galaxies of power they contained. He stared into them only a moment, until he began to feel their pull, then turned away.

He shut his eyes, bracing himself. Even after all that had happened, even now, knowing what he did, it pained him to let go.

“There is only one thing I would like to change first.”

“What is it?” Thor murmured.

Loki kept his eyes closed. He eased himself on a breath, parted his lips, and closed the infinity gauntlet one more time into a fist, flexing its power.

It pulsed, then faded.

“There. It’s done.”

“Loki...?”

What happened next came with considerably more effort.

Loki took hold of the gauntlet at its wrist with his free hand, and pulled. It wasn’t easy. He could feel the gems’ power reaching back for him, digging into his insides, not wanting to lose their host when they were reunited again after so long. But Loki closed his eyes and grit his teeth and felt the alternating hot and cold waves sweep over him as power spilled out, like a spell unchecked, and though he couldn’t see the white-hot light that spilled from the gauntlet at being so jilted, he could feel it.

It hurt.

He screamed.

The light died and the power faded as he tossed the gauntlet aside at last. It clattered against the Bifrost and slowed to a stop near its edge. There it lay, its lights dimmed, as if any other inanimate object.

Vision approached it calmly and bent down, picking it up. He turned it over in his hands and examined it from all angles, as if to inspect its craft.

Loki might have protested if he’d had the energy left. As it was, he could only lean against Thor, panting for breath and shivering as a sheen of sweat cooled on his skin.

The Norns had their answer, whatever good it did them. With a cackle of laughter they swirled together into a grey cloud, spinning faster and faster until they formed a black portal through the sky itself.

“We will be seeing you again, Little Laufeyson,” they shrieked in manic delight. “Oh yes, we will be seeing you again!”

“Odinson,” Loki coughed, his voice hoarse and unsteady. “My name is—”

He turned, and heaved, the very core of him rising up as if to flee his body. He coughed as if retching up his own guts, the black taint inside him no longer contained or created by the amount of power he carried. It fell like a blot upon the Bifrost, hissing and sizzling where it landed.

Then...then it was gone.

Like a sudden lightness in his body and spirit that he’d not realized he’d lost, Loki could feel it. A sickness suddenly cured. He’d been carrying it so long and with such acceptance he had grown acclimated. Now, despite the cramp in his sides and the vile taste left over in his mouth, he smiled. Smiled, and almost laughed.

He dropped back against Thor and Thor held him, panting as he caught his breath.

Quiet settled in. And yet, it was not quiet. The sound of the waves still washed against the bridge supports. The wind caressed the distant trees and rippled the cloth of Thor’s cloak around him. Loki breathed, and listened to the sound of his own heartbeat. The stars overhead had never looked so bright, or so crisp and clear.

It felt as if a shroud had been lifted from all his senses. Now, he was just very, very tired. And in desperate need of a bath.

Thor squeezed him.

“What happens now?” He looked up to Frigga.

“Now?” Frigga stood to her feet. She held out her hand and beckoned the Vision close, slipping her arm into his once he was near. “Now, we are going to go for a walk and have a nice long discussion, and the two of you are going to stay here and come to terms with each other.”

Thor and Loki opened their mouths to simultaneously protest. She silenced them both with a look.

“We will speak again soon,” she said through a tight-lipped smile. She turned, moving at a casual, easy pace with the Vision as she led the way down the Bifrost and back towards Asgard. Taking the gauntlet with them.

Quiet ruled in their wake, much as it had before.

It was Thor who finally broke it.

“Are you...” he began, tentative. “…alright?”

Loki slouched still against his chest, his chin drooped. His breathing had slowed, but a great exhaustion filled his body with a weakness he did not expect he would recover from for quite some time. He felt he could sleep for an age.

“No,” he murmured. Then he cleared his throat to speak again. “No, I am not. But I suppose I will be. Someday.” He lifted his head to rest against Thor’s chest, looking up at the stars. “At any rate, I will live.”

“Good,” Thor rumbled, and closed his arms around him, blocking a little of the wind that had grown too chill for Loki’s comfort. He did not try to move him, but rocked gently instead. Loki wondered if he was even aware he did it.

“What did you change?” Thor asked at length, just as Loki was managing to drift off to sleep. Thor was warm, and he was so tired.

“What?” Loki slurred, his eyes fluttering open.

Thor kept his voice low.

“Before you gave up the gauntlet...what was it you changed?”

“Oh.” Loki found it in him to smirk. Just a little. He let out the breathiest of laughs. “Your friend. The Iron Man.”

“Yes?”

“I gave him performance issues.”

Thor fell quiet, unsure of whether or not he told the truth.

“Only one out of every five tries,” Loki reassured him.

Then Thor couldn’t help it. He laughed. He rocked and squeezed Loki tightly to him again, either oblivious or uncaring of the state of Loki’s lack of cleanliness.

“What do we do now?” Loki asked, once they had settled again. If Thor had any notion of returning them both to Asgard, he was proving slow to act upon it. Nor did Loki mind. He rather preferred it here, alone, surrounded by dark overhead and the colors of the Bifrost below. Just the two of them.

“We go home,” said Thor, predictably.

“I can’t go home, Thor.” Loki hadn’t the strength left to shake his head. “Not after what I’ve done.”

“Asgard needs its king.”

“Odin will return. Then he’ll have nothing more to do with me. I’ve served my purpose.”

“Then we will face him together and tell him he is wrong.”

“Your friends will not have it.”

“But I will.”

Loki sighed. Somehow, this argument felt familiar.

And he loved it.

He tilted his head aside, resting it against Thor’s shoulder. Thor bent his head and the scratch of his beard fell on Loki’s neck. It made him gasp and shudder, and Loki blamed it on an overly sensitive body and overtired nerves.

“Mother will not stay...”

“Then we should cherish what time we have with her, and not waste it in anguish.”

Loki groaned.

“Your head is truly thick. No matter what I do or say, you continue to insist on this belief that I am something worth saving.”

“Because you are.”

“You are mistaken.”

“I act as I feel, Loki. It is what I believe. Would you call me a liar?”

“There was a time I would have thought you not capable, but...no. No, I would not.”

“Well, there you have it.”

Their hands grasped. They lay across Loki’s middle, fingers linked.

“What can I say?” murmured Loki.

“What is there to be said?”

“You cannot carry the burdens I have taken.”

“Then I shall carry you.”

“To keep an eye on me, no doubt.”

“Yes. That, too. We shall strive for a new level of honesty from now on.”

“Ugh...” Loki groaned and turned his head away. Thor’s mawkish sense of optimism was truly sickening.

But he continued to hold him, and Loki did not object.

“Loki,” came Thor’s voice again at length, mumbled low, close to his throat. Both their eyes turned out into the darkness of the sea. The waves disrupting the reflections of the stars. “Is it true what you said before? About giving me all your love?”

“I believed I was dying, so...yes.” Loki breathed. “I imagine it was true.”

“Because...if you allow me...I will have it.”

Loki tilted his head aside, enough to meet Thor’s eyes. That same earnestness shone there. A sincerity and dedication every bit as vehement as the storms he summoned. No other look suited Thor quite so well.

For a moment, Loki didn’t answer. He could think of no words before that look. It bloomed warmth in his heart that spread out through the course of his veins. Just when he thought he could feel nothing else.

It was…amazing.

The look he must have given answered Thor enough, for he smiled, and leaned in to bring their faces close once again.

Loki turned his head away at the last moment, reeling.

“Do _not_ kiss me.”

His mouth still tasted of black bile.

Thor grinned, and settled for one on his brow.


End file.
